Timeline of the internet

The History of the Internet can be traced back to the launch of Sputnik in 1957. The United States desired to stay ahead in the technology race with the Soviet and protect itself against spaced –based nuclear attack. USA created the ARPA agency for this purpose. The potential of a country-wide communications network began its inception and indeed was brought to life.

Interface Message Processor, a special computer, was developed to realize this new design, and the ARPANET went live on 29th of October 1969 with the first communications between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute.

1969: The first message

The first message was ‘LOG’. It was meant to be ‘LOGIN’ but the system crashed with the enormous computation of the letter G.

1969: Unix

Today’s web servers and web hosting services still use an operating system who’s design is greatly influenced but the Unix which was conceived in the late 60s.

1971: Email!

Ray Tomlinson developed and sent the first email message. He also decided to use the @ sign to distinguish between messages addressed to mailboxes in the local machine and messages that were headed out onto the network. “The @ sign seemed to make sense,” he recalled. “I used the @ sign to indicate that the user was ‘at’ some other host rather than being local.”

1971: Storage and the beginning of eBooks

Michael Hart came to an incredible realization that was the start of Project Gutenberg. A site that makes books and documents available electronically and for free.

His realization was that the future of computers was more in storage, searching and finding information that was usually only available at libraries.

1972: French Internet

It was called Cyclades but it was eventually shut down.

1973: across the sea

The University College of London and Arpanet made its first connection.

1973: who knew email would be so popular

Email accounted for 75% of all Arpanet activity.

1974: The beginning of an inter-network

A breakthrough year. A proposal was published to link Arpa-like networks together to form an inter-network. It would have no central control and would work around a transmission control protocol.

1975: Forward and reply

The first modern email program was developed by John Vittal, a programmer at the University of Southern California. The biggest technological advance this program made was the addition of “Reply” and “Forward” functionality.

1977: The PC modem introduced

Developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington

1978: Spam is born

Unsolicited commercial email message, later known as spam, was sent out to 600 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk.

1979: MUD – the first multiplayer games

Called MUD which is short for MultiUser Dungeon. MUDs were entirely text-based virtual worlds, combining elements of role-playing games, interactive, fiction, and online chat.

1979: Usenet

Usenet was an internet-based discussion system that aloud people from across the globe to discuss topics. A formal chat group.

1982: The first emoticon

-) by Kevin MacKenzie

🙂 by Scott Fahlamn

1983: Arpanet computers switch over to TCP/IP

January 1, 1983 was the deadline for Arpanet computers to switch over to the TCP/IP protocols developed by Vinton Cerf. A few hundred computers were affected by the switch. The name server was also developed in ’83.

1984: Domain Name System (DNS) is created

The domain name system was important in that it made addresses on the Internet more human-friendly compared to its numerical IP address counterparts. DNS servers allowed Internet users to type in an easy-to-remember domain name and then converted it to the IP address automatically.

1988: IRC – Internet Relay Chat

This paved the way for real-time chat and the instant messaging programs we use today.

1988: First worm

Referred to as “The Morris Worm”, it was written by Robert Tappan Morris and caused major interruptions across large parts of the Internet.

1989: AOL is launched

When Apple pulled out of the AppleLink program in 1989, the project was renamed and America Online was born. AOL, still in existence today.

1989: The proposal for the World Wide Web

Written by Tim Berners-Lee. It was written to persuade CERN that a global hypertext system was in CERN’s best interest. It was originally called “Mesh”.

1990: Arpanet ceased to exist.

1990: World Wide Web protocols finished

The code for the World Wide Web was written by Tim Berners-Lee, based on his proposal from the year before, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs.

1991: Gopher was launched

The first search protocol that examined file contents instead of just file names.

1991: MP3 becomes a standard

1991: The first webcam

At a Cambridge University computer lab a camera was set up to monitor the coffee makers so that students didn’t wait a trip for empty coffee pot.

1993: Mosaic – first graphical web browser for the general public

The first widely downloaded Internet browser, Mosaic, was released in 1993. While Mosaic wasn’t the first web browser, it is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.

1993: Governments join in

Marking the beginning of the .gov and .org domain names.

1995: Commercialization of the internet

The first sale on “Echo Bay” was made that year. Echo Bay later became eBay. Amazon.com also started in 1995.

1998: News will never be the same

The Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal was the first major News story to go viral.

1998: Google!

Google revolutionized the way in which people find information on-line.

1998: Napster launched

This opened up the gates to mainstream file-sharing of audio files over the internet.

2000: Y2K

2000 was the year of the dotcom collapse, resulting in huge losses for legions of investors.

2001: Wikipedia is launched

One of the websites that paved the way for collective web content generation/social media.

2003: Skype is released

2003: MySpace is launched and is HUGE

2003: CAN-SPAM

The CAN-SPAM Act. Was signed. Official name was Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003

2004: Digg brings life to social media

Digg, a social news site, launched on November of 2004, paved the way for sites such as Yahoo! Buzz.

2004: “The” Facebook is launched to college students

2005: YouTube is born

2006: Tweeters begin to witter

The first Twitter message was “just setting up my twttr”.

2007: iPhone was invented

2008: Internet Election

Hillary Clinton used YouTube campaign videos and virtually every candidate had a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, or both.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Contact us and we will help guide you and grow your company with expert advice, specifically within the digital marketplace. If you are not moving forward with the digital revolution, you are at a huge disadvantage!