The Internet has been around for much longer than most people think, with its roots able to be traced back to the 1960s. Clear goals have driven some, whilst others have become household names almost by accident. Find fascinating facts on a phenomenon that has changed communication to an extent which was previously totally unimaginable.

At the beginning The Internet began to evolve when packet-switching networks came into operation in the 1960s. When transmitted, data is broken up into small packets, sent to its destination and then reassembled. In this way a single signal can be sent to multiple users. Packets can be compressed for speed and encrypted for security. ARPANET moves it forward Early packet-switching networks were set up in Europe. In 1968, a similar system was developed in the USA which went into operation at the US Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1969. ARPA, also called ARPANET, used Network Control Protocol (NCP) as its transmission protocol from 1969 to 1982, when NCP was replaced with the now widespread TCP-IP (Transmission Control Protocol - Internet Protocol). With the technology in place, the question was what to do with it! A number of interconnected US military computers formed the first sizable Internet for defense use. E-mail developed through ARPANET as did the bulletin-board system, Usenet in the 1970s/80s. During this period all major universities in the USA were connected to the network. This was found to be the ideal method of sharing experimental and educational data. 1973 saw the first intercontinental connection when the University College of London, England, joined the Internet. USENET spurs it on USENET contributed enormously to the Internet’s rapid expansion and is considered to have begun in 1979. Its spirit of information sharing and discussion was the hallmark of its system and was reflected in the Internet as a whole. When personal computers were introduced in the late 1970s, a huge new and ever-expanding computer population was introduced to the Internet. E-mails was increasingly used, network discussions took place and in the 1980s, communities formed chat rooms. The World Wide Web widens its horizons 1991 saw the introduction of what we now call the World Wide Web, the brainchild of Englishman Tim Berners-Lee. He saw the need for a standard linked information system which could be accessed by all the various types of computers in use. In 1993 the first properly developed web-browser, Mosaic, took the Internet by storm. Developed at the National Centre for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), it gave birth to a huge boom in Web usage. What is the Internet? Today, the Internet is an enormous network of millions of computers allowing constant communication throughout the world. It includes: the World Wide Web, electronic mail (e-mail), File transfer Protocol (FTP), Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and USENET (news service). The World Wide Web is the part of the Internet that most users see and use and which has made it so popular. The web continues to grow at an absolutely incredible rate. Technology has improved to such an extent that the web is now considered to be indispensable for education, business and entertainment. There are billions of pages on the web and thousands more are added every hour. E-Mail Anyone can apply for an e-mail address and send and receive messages from their computer. The main benefit is the almost instantaneous delivery of messages. An e-mail to the other side of the world takes a mere 60 seconds. You can also sign up to automatically receive newsletters and other information, delivered directly to your computer. File Transfer Protocol Web pages are transferred between computers using the HTTP protocol, with other types of files sent using FTP. Users can share files, such as music and videos between themselves and the rest of the world by uploading them to a server and then allowing others to download them to their own computers. Internet Relay Chat IRC is a service allowing you to connect to your chosen channel and talk to others with the same interests. By downloading an appropriate program, you can start chatting right away. USENET USENET (Unix User Network) is a system of bulletin boards whereby messages and points of view can be posted to be read and replied to. Similar to IRC, all sorts of topics are discussed and a wide range of groups take part. There is no doubt that the Internet will have an increasing influence on the world in future. Father of the Web In 1976, Tim Berners-Lee graduated from Oxford University, England, where he’d built his first computer with a soldering iron using a Motorola microprocessor and an old television set. He then spent two years working for major Telecom equipment manufacturer Plessey Telecommunications Ltd, in Dorset, UK. In 1978 Tim went to D.G Nash Ltd, also in Dorset, where he wrote software for intelligent printers and also a multitasking operating system. He then spent eighteen months as an independent consultant. During this time, from June to December 1980, he carried out work as a consultant software engineer for CERN (well-known European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland). Whilst there, he wrote a program for storing information including using random associations, for his own use. He called it "Enquire", but it was never published. However, this program was the basis for the future development of the World Wide Web. Between 1981 and 1984, Tim worked for Image Computer Systems Ltd, responsible for technical design. In 1984, he took up a fellowship at CERN, to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. During this time he also worked on FASTBUS system software and designed a heterogeneous remote procedure call system. In 1989, he submitted a proposal to CERN to develop an information system thus creating a web of information. CERN didn’t react, but he started working on it anyway. It was based on his previous "Enquire" work and designed to enable people to work collectively and combine their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. In 1990, he wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) - the computer language, which would be used to communicate hypertext documents on the Internet. He also designed a system to provide document addresses on the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee called the address a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). (This is now generally known as a URL - Uniform Resource Locator.) By the end of 1990, he had also written a program (browser) to retrieve and view hypertext documents. This he called "WorldWideWeb." He went on to write the first web server – the software, which stores web pages on a computer for others to access. Tim then set up the first server as info.cern.ch at CERN and tried to awaken interest in introducing the system in the company to link data between their various incompatible systems. But bureaucracy reigned and his efforts went unrecognised. So he turned his attention to the Internet community and in 1991 made his WorldWideWeb browser and server software available on the Internet. Web growth and misgivings As the number of Web users grew, it became more and more appealing as a medium. Sharing information became much simpler. It was far easier to post information on the Web once than reply repeatedly to multiple requests for the same data. Official bodies, required to publicize their information, also turned to the Web. The Web became even more attractive as the amount of available information increased. The number of sites and users grew constantly and the number of visitors to the info.cern.ch server grew by a factor of ten each year. By summer 1993, the site was getting ten thousand hits a day. Tim Berners-Lee was delighted with the growth - but also had misgivings. He considered the Web to be a serious medium and was concerned that the visual-appeal being introduced would cause it to become frivolous. He was also concerned that the huge success would lead to such fierce competition that the open nature of the Web would be endangered. Tim recognized that a control of some sort was necessary to maintain a smooth running Web. However, a controlling body should not be able to alter the basic freedom and openness of the Web. An Information Society in One Network >>>
The internet camera at the day-care “Gandriukas“ (“Baby-stork“) became a pleasing daily round >>>
To the Trade Center ”Europa” with a Computer >>>
Unique self-service department at “Europa” supermarket >>>