How did the Internet come into existence ?
Answers
Explanation:
The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network.
Answer:
The origins of the internet are rooted in the USA of the 1950s. The Cold War was at its height and huge tensions existed between North America and the Soviet Union. Both superpowers had deadly nuclear weapons, and people lived in fear of long-range surprise attacks. The US realized it needed a communications system that could not be affected by a Soviet nuclear attack.
At this time, computers were large, expensive machines exclusively used by military scientists and university staffs.
No one person invented the internet. When networking technology was first developed, a number of scientists and engineers brought their research together to create the ARPANET. Later, other inventors’ creations paved the way for the web as we know it today.
• PAUL BARAN (1926–2011)
An engineer whose work overlapped with ARPA’s research. In 1959 he joined an American think tank, the RAND Corporation, and was asked to research how the US Air Force could keep control of its fleet if a nuclear attack ever happened. In 1964 Baran proposed a communication network with no central command point. If one point was destroyed, all surviving points would still be able to communicate with each other. He called this a distributed network.
• LAWRENCE ROBERTS (1937–2018)
Chief scientist at ARPA, responsible for developing computer networks. Paul Baran’s idea appealed to Roberts, and he began to work on the creation of a distributed network.
• LEONARD KLEINROCK (1934–)
An American scientist who worked towards the creation of a distributed network alongside Lawrence Roberts.
• DONALD DAVIES (1924–2000)
A British scientist who, at the same time as Roberts and Kleinrock, was developing similar technology at the National Physical Laboratory in Middlesex.
• BOB KAHN (1938–) AND VINT CERF (1943–)
American computer scientists who developed TCP/IP, the set of protocols that governs how data moves through a network. This helped the ARPANET evolve into the internet we use today. Vint Cerf is credited with the first written use of the word ‘internet’.
When asked to explain my role in the creation of the internet, I generally use the example of a city. I helped to build the roads—the infrastructure that gets things from point A to point B.
—Vint Cerf, 2007
• PAUL MOCKAPETRIS (1948–) AND JON POSTEL (1943–98)
Inventors of DNS, the ‘phone book of the internet’.
• TIM BERNERS-LEE (1955–)
Creator of the World Wide Web who developed many of the principles we still use today, such as HTML, HTTP, URLs and web browsers.
There was no “Eureka!” moment. It was not like the legendary apple falling on Newton’s head to demonstrate the concept of gravity. Inventing the World Wide Web involved my growing realisation that there was a power in arranging ideas in an unconstrained, weblike way. And that awareness came to me through precisely that kind of process. The Web arose as the answer to an open challenge, through the swirling together of influences, ideas, and realisations from many sides.
—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999
• MARC ANDREESSEN (1971–)
Inventor of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser.