The greatest engineering achievement before 1970 has to be the Internet. The concept of the Internet was first conceived in the 1960s as tool to connect university and government research centres through a nationwide network (Abbate, 2000). The Internet, which has gradually grown to be a significant instrument of social change to mankind, was created via a series of complex engineering innovations.
Leonard Kleinrock first designed a packet switching network in 1962. In the following year, J.C.R. Licklider, the then head of the computer research at ARPA, articulated a vision of a network system in which machines and people worldwide would be able to connect (Kamal, 2002). 1966, a packet-switched ARPAnet was created by Larry Robeters and became the foundation of the Internet as we know it. Roberts was able to link a Massachussetts computer with another one in California via dial-up telephone lines (Moran, 2010). In 1969, the Internet (under the name ARPANET) was brought online under a contract carried out by BBN of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The most interesting of this engineering fete is that the Internet was made in such a way that a communications network would still operate even when some of its major sites were down. In instances where most direct route was unavailable, routers would be used to direct traffic all over the network via alternate routes (Grove, 2009).
It was also noteworthy that the early Internet users were computer experts, scientists, librarians, and engineers, all of whom had to learn how to go around the rather complex system. Office or home personal computers did not exist in those days (Petroski, 2011). Generally, the Internet was the greatest engineering undertaking in the 1960s that came about as a result of collaboration among different players such as computer scientists in engineering and academia, government and military agencies, graduates students among other contributors (Abbate, 2000).
References:
Abbate, J. (2000). Inventing the Internet. Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Grove, R. (2009). Web Based Application Development. Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Kamal, R. (2002). Internet & Web Technologies. Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Moran, P. T. (2010). Introduction to the History of Communication: Evolutions & Revolutions. Bern: Peter Lang.
Petroski, H. (2011). An Engineer’s Alphabet:
Gleanings from the Softer Side of a Profession. London: Cambridge University Press.
