Sending a message from Saint Louis, MO, to San Diego, CA, used to take days. Now we can send not just a message, but pictures, music, and live video in a fraction of seconds. People connect billions of devices each day using the internet. However, what we take for granted has a long history. The internet has experienced quite a large amount of changes since ARPA created it. We can now browse, work, socialize, and be entertained on the internet.


President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which was a government agency to explore and push the boundaries of technology and science for military use. Eisenhower created ARPA during the Cold War as a response to Russia's launch of the Sputnik satellite (Being Fluent & Faithful in a Digital World , “ARPA”). J.C.R. Licklider (born in St. Louis, MO) of MIT joined the Advanced Research Projects Agency. He wrote papers on his concept of the “Galactic Network.” His idea was much like our internet today. These papers convinced people within the agency that the idea was important.


Licklider had the idea – now the technology had to be developed. Leonard Kleinrock, also from MIT, published a paper on the theory of packet switching. Packet switching is the method of how data is sent over the internet and it's predecessors. To send data and messages, the computer converted the data into packets. The client program sent these packets to the server, and then from the server to the receiving client. MIT researcher Lawrence Roberts, along with Thomas Merrill, were able to make two computers “talk” to each other over a phone line using packet switching.


Late 1966, Roberts joined ARPA to create the ARPANET. Roberts published the plan in 1967. The network was ready for testing by college students and professors in 1969. This network had a limited reach – only between four computers in the west coast. Kleinrock, using a computer at UCLA, sent the first data sent over the network - an attempt to log into a computer at Stanford Research Institute. After he typed a few letters, the computer crashed. He rebooted the computer, and it worked. These men started the big boom of the internet.


At first there were only four computers connected to the ARPANET. They were located at UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbra, and the University of Utah. Various colleges added computers to the ARPANET in the following years. APRA developed the Network Control Protocol later, so that developers had a certain way of accepting packets in their programs.


In October of 1972, ARPA held the first large demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference. Email also debuted this year. Email was the most used network application for over ten years. Email was just the beginning of using computer networking for socializing.


Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis created Usenet in 1979 by for exchanging news and messages using telephone modems. A client program specifically for Usenet (internet browsers were still not created) would allow users to post and read news and hold discussions from different “newsgroups.” Stephen Daniel created A News, the first public client for Usenet. Emoticons and internet acronyms (such as LOL) originated or became popular on the Usenet.


Networks were not social with other networks – they were all separate and incompatible, as different networks had different protocols. Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine developed a protocol called Transmission Control Program (TCP) so that all networks could communicate with each other. Cerf, Dalal, and Sunshine coined the term “internet” in the paper describing TCP. TCP later led to the TCP/IP. ARPANET only used TCP/IP from then on.


While TCP/IP made communication easier, users still had a lot of memorization to do. In 1984, Paul Mockapetris created the domain name system (DNS). I'm going to shift to first person for a moment to explain how relevant this is to you. If you were to connect to a server, you would have to know its IP address. Had Google been around at the time, you would need to remember “74.125.225.70” to connect to it. With the DNS system, you could register a domain such as “google.com.”


In the 1990's internet usage skyrocketed. Once the internet reached homes, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web (WWW). WWW was a hypertext system, which allowed for text to be clicked that “linked” to other text. Hypertext itself was not new – hypertext systems had existed since the 1970's.


For hypertext to work, Berners-Lee created a new language. This language, called the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), is how web pages were (and still are) made. Originating as only text and links, HTML grew to allow robust page design – including images, text formatting, background editing, and more. Most pages visited on the web are delivered using the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). When “http://www.facebook.com/home.php” is visited, the web browser is sending out something like:
“GET /home.php HTTP/1.1
HOST: www.facebook.com”


Home users originally connected to the world wide web using telephone lines through an internet service provider (ISP). The first internet service provider was The World. The World's webpage gives a good (but bitter) taste of what the web was like in the 1990's – hideous animated images, strange backgrounds, and eye-burning color palettes. Many websites also overused the HTML blink tag (which made text blink off and on) and marquee tag (scrolling text). Used together, blink and marquee possibly blinded half of the early web users.


Of course, for a web page to look eye-pleasing instead of a jumble of coding, someone had to be make a client to view web pages and enable interactivity. The first popular web browser was NCSA Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. Andreessen later founded the Netscape Internet Service Provider and created the Netscape Navigator (based on Mosaic). Most browsers today have a similar interface to Mosaic.


In 1994, Netscape developed the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol for more secure internet communications. People use SSL all the time today, from buying products online to logging into Facebook. If a site has “https” instead of “http,” it is using SSL with HTTP.


With the release of SSL in 1994, the web went commercial one year later in 1995. Sites that required credit card transactions used SSL. Pierre Omidyar launched the now-popular online auction site, Echo Bay (now eBay). The online bookseller (no longer just books) Amazon, created by Jeff Bezos, also launched the same year. Both of these men are now incredibly rich due to their creations. Sites like these were only known by word of mouth for a short time – but that changed.


In 1994, Google didn't exist. Yahoo! Search didn't exist. In 1994, Stanford Ph.D. Students David Filo and Jerry Yang created an internet directory called “David and Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web.” Web directories had been around since the introduction of the web. Without web directories, the only way to get to any website would be to know the URL to it. David Filo and Jerry Yang's internet directory is worth mentioning because they incorporated it one year later as Yahoo! Inc. The “!” in the name was required, because the name “Yahoo” had been trademarked as a name for a brand of steak sauce (The History of Corporate, “Yahoo! Inc”).


In 1996, Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin created a search engine called BackRub. BackRub destined to become the most popular search engine in the world. BackRub operated on Stanford's servers (until it took up too much bandwidth). Page and Brin renamed the search engine two years later as Google – a misspelling of googol, the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. In 1998, Page and Brin get a $100,000 investment that launches their search engine. PC Magazine later that year chooses Google as the search engine of choice.


In 1999, online music sharing begins. ~18 year old college dropout Shawn Fanning created a program for file sharing and instant messaging called Napster. Before Napster, the only way to download music online was from Usenet groups or from unreliable music downloading sites. Napster worked differently, as it was peer-to-peer networking. Peer-to-peer has two computers (or more) directly exchanging files, rather than downloading the files from one server. Many people of the music industry sued Napster in 2000 and shut down the program in 2001. It later reopened as a (legal) MP3 download store.


In 2000 and 2001, the “dot com bubble” popped. Stock prices of web based businesses plummeted. Many people who became millionaires from investing in online companies went broke. As with any stock market event, there's no one answer to what the cause was. One of the main causes was that “e” companies were overvalued. Investments in online companies stayed down for a long time.


In 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched a website that teenagers and college students couldn't live without. YouTube? Facebook? Nope – this site was Wikipedia. Sanger came up with the name – a combination of the Hawaiian word wiki (meaning quick), and encyclopedia. Computer encyclopedias had been around long before Wikipedia (for a fee), including Encyclopedia Britannica and Microsoft Encarta. The popularity of Wikipedia stemmed from being free and from being updated by users, which allowed for it to be updated as soon as news happened. Of course, being updated by users lead to false information and vandalism. Wikipedia introduced “locks” to restrict editing of controversial or vandalism-prone pages to trusted users. While it is user edited, a study showed that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica (Terdiman, “Study: Wikipedia as Accurate as Britannica”). While it is normally not considered good practice to cite Wikipedia, I figured citing Wikipedia about Wikipedia would be acceptable.


Another big innovation to the web was Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). VoIP allows people to “call” other people on the web. In 2003, Skype was the first major voice chat program. Niklas Zennstrom (from Sweeden) and Janus Friis (from Denmark) created Skype. Zennstrom and Friis had previously worked together on a program similar to Napster, called Kazaa. Skype's technology was peer-to-peer, similar to Kazaa.


Usenet was the seed of online social networking. One of the first large social networks, MySpace, launched in 2004 by Chris DeWolfe, Brad Greenspan, Tom Anderson, and Josh Berman. One month after the launch of MySpace, the site already had one million registered users. In eleven months, the site had reached five million registered users.


The facebook, created by Mark Zuckerberg, started out as a social network for Harvard students. The facebook later became Facebook after Zuckerberg bought “facebook.com” for $200,000. In 2005, anyone in high school or college could sign up. In 2006, anyone with an email could register. Facebook caught up to MySpace in user count in 2008, and finally took a hold on the social networking users. MySpace's activity rapidly declined due to Facebook.


In 2006, a different kind of social network started up. Twitter, created by Jack Dorsey (from St. Louis, MO), Even Williams, and Biz Stone, works on the concept of “microblogging.” Posts are limited to 140 characters. This limit is because text messages are limited at 160 characters, and Twitter wanted to send posts to phones with room for usernames.


Many new sites and technologies are on the horizon – all in part based off of J.C.R. Licklider's idea of the “Galactic Network.” Some cell phone companies may plan to use VoIP to make calls. Online television program sites such as Netflix and Hulu may replace cable and satellite television.


The history of the internet is vast – and well documented on the web. It's hard to imagine just 40 years ago, the web was formed by a few people into what it is today. While the internet has seen a lot of change, it is still largely the same as 40 years ago. The one thing certain about the future of the internet and how we use it is that nothing is certain.












Bibliography
Aamoth, Doug. "A Brief History of Skype." Time Tech. Time, 10 May 2011. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://techland.time.com/2011/05/10/a-brief-history-of-skype/>.
Bellis, Mary. "ARPAnet - The First Internet." ARPAnet - The First Internet. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa091598.htm>.
Bonnett, Cara. "A Piece of Internet History." Duke Today. Duke University, 17 May 2010. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://today.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html>.
Calvin College. "ARPA." Being Fluent & Faithful in a Digital World. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2013. <http://www.calvin.edu/academic/rit/webBook/chapter3/Introduction/arpanet.htm>.
Cerf, Vinton, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine. "RFC 675 - Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program." RFC 675 - Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program. N.p., 1974. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc675>.
Connolly, Don. "A Little History of the World Wide Web." W3.com. N.p., 2000. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://www.w3.org/History.html>.
"The Dot-Com Bubble Bursts." The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 2000. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/24/opinion/the-dot-com-bubble-bursts.html>.
Edmondson-Yurkanan, Chris. "Technical History of Cyclades." THINK Protocols. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Cyclades/>.
Google. "Our History in Depth." Google. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.google.com/about/company/history/>.
Halter, Burk. "A Brief History of Napster." A Brief History of Napster. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring01/burkhalter/napster history.html>.
"History of the Internet." History of Things. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://www.historyofthings.com/history-of-the-internet>.
IBM. "History of SSL." ISeries Information Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=/rzain/rzainhistory.htm>.
Internet Society. "Brief History of the Internet." Internet Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet>.
Johnson, Mark. "The History of Twitter." Socialnomics. N.p., 23 Jan. 2013. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/01/23/the-history-of-twitter/>.
Mitchell, Bradley. "Packet." Networking - About. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://compnetworking.about.com/od/networkprotocols/l/bldef_packet.htm>.
NCSA University of Illinois. "About NCSA Mosaic." About NCSA Mosaic. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Projects/mosaic.html>.
New Media Institute. "History of the Internet." History of the Internet. N.p., 2012. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://www.newmedia.org/history-of-the-internet.html>.
NSF Network Service Center. "Network Providers for Low-Volume Users." Network Providers for Low-Volume Users. N.p., 1992. Web. 21 May 2013. <http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/pub/internexus/ACCESS.PROVIDRS>.
"Paul Mockapetris." Biology Daily. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 May 2013. <http://biosphere.biologydaily.com/biology/Paul_Mockapetris>.
Phillips, Sarah. "A Brief History of Facebook." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 July 2007. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia>.
Smith, Kalen. "History of the Dot-Com Bubble Burst." Money Crashers. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.moneycrashers.com/dot-com-bubble-burst/>.
Stenovec, Timothy. "Myspace History: A Timeline Of The Social Network's Biggest Moments." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 29 June 2011. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/29/myspace-history-timeline_n_887059.html>.
Terdiman, Daniel. "Study: Wikipedia as Accurate as Britannica - CNET News." CNET News. CBS Interactive, 15 Dec. 2005. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html>.
"Wikipedia Survives Research Test." BBC News. BBC, 15 Dec. 2005. Web. 23 May 2013. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm>.
"Wikipedia." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 May 2013. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia>.
Winter, Alex. "The Short History of Napster 1.0." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 16 Apr. 2013. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/napster/>.
"Yahoo! Inc." The History of Corporate. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://www.thehistoryofcorporate.com/companies-by-industry/information-industry/yahoo-inc/>.
Yahoo! "The Roots." Yahoo! Press Room. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2013. <http://pressroom.yahoo.net/pr/ycorp/history.aspx>.