History of the Internet
The history of Internet has its roots in the first development of electronic computers back in the 1950s. The precursor of the Internet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) using the packet switching technology, was born in 1960. Four sites at the universities of California at Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Utah, and Standard Research Institute were connected and information shared through computers (Ryan, 2013). The ARPANET enabled the subsequent development of protocols for internetworking, where numerous different networks would be linked to form a network of networks.
The actions of USSR during the Cold War period inspired the invention of the Internet by the United States. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, effectively beating the US in the race to space. The possibly of the Soviet Union developing a nuclear bomb, sending to space, and dropping it anywhere on earth inspired the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop information technologies capable of surviving such a nuclear attack (Ryan, 2013). DAPRA was mandated to undertake research in science and technology so that the United States would reclaim the lead from the USSR. DAPRA was headed by J.C.R. Licklider, whose efforts with Lawrence G. Roberts, Bob Taylor, and Ivan Sutherland culminated in the development of the Internet. Roberts headed development of the ARPANet network architecture (Ryan, 2013).
In the 1990s the Internet was offered to the public as a self-sustaining widespread information infrastructure widely accessible to millions of people world-wide. To date the Internet is neither owned nor funded by any one government, organization, or institution. The open Internet standards are meant to make the Internet publicly available for use by everyone freely. The decision to have open standards was in the interest of its interoperability (Ryan, 2013). The Internet system generally consists of interconnected computer networks interconnected by lots of electronic, wireless, as well as optical networking technologies.
Reference:
Ryan, J. (2013). A history of the Internet and the digital future. London, England: Reaktion Books.
