Time for that FYI and a little history after all it is a Sunday.

There have been several ‘eras’ in the 20th century….the atomic era, etc….but the one that has had the most impact worldwide is the digital era.

Many of our young use the internet ad nauseam for hour upon hour on such mind numbing endeavors as Facebook, TikTok, et al….but how many can sit and tell us where the marvel of modern engineering came from or when?

Let’s begin with when and where this baby was born….

Arguably, the seeds of the Internet’s history began in 1957 in the historical context of the Cold War, which divided the world into two blocs led by the Soviet Union and the United States. In that year, the USSR launched the first satellite into space, Sputnik I. In response, the Americans created the Internet. In response, in 1958, the Americans created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, under the Department of Defence. This agency had the talents of some 200 scientists focused on creating a network capable of communicating between several computers located in different places.

In 1961, Leonard Kleinrock published the packet-switching theory from his post at MIT. It was based on the idea that all the information leaving a device was chopped up into blocks to facilitate its transmission. He called these blocks packets. The following year, Paul Baran presented a communications system that, through computers connected to a decentralised network, was immune to external attacks. Thus, if one node was destroyed, the rest could continue without any problems.

Later, in 1965, it was possible to connect two computers: one in Massachusetts and the other in California by means of a telephone line, although it was not very operational. The big breakthrough came in 1969 with Michael Elie, who succeeded in connecting a computer at the University of California with one at the Stanford Research Institute. Soon after, four more universities joined and this interconnection was called the Arpanet.

It happened in 1983. The US Department of Defense decided to incorporate the TCP/IP protocol into its network, which was renamed Arpanet Internet, and eventually, the term Internet alone remained.

Years later, in 1989, Tim Berners Lee incorporated three new resources: HTML, HTTP and a programme called Web Browser. They were the basis for making web pages. A year later, the Internet was born in closed form within CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research based in Switzerland, and in 1991, it finally reached the general public.

History of the Internet: how did it come into being and how has it evolved 

It might be a good thing to understand what, when and why the internet has become such a part of our daily lives.

Go out and enjoy the Sunday…..and as always…..Be Well and Be Safe….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”