A Very Brief History of the Internet

Meanings

We use the internet everyday. Before we dive into conversations about navigating the rich resources you can find online, it’s helpful to understand what these terms mean and where this all came from.

If a 5-year old child asked you: “What is the internet?” how would you describe it?

This can be challenging, because we may not think about how the internet works, and many of us take the internet for granted. To keep it simple, the internet can be described as a very large network of computers that communicate with each other in standardized ways, so information can be shared efficiently and effectively.

History

In 1969, the first version of the internet was created and set up as a network (called ARPANET) between four “nodes”: UCLA, the Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah (Mack). A student programmer named Charley Kline sent the first message over ARPANET on October 29, 1969.  The simple message  “LO” was supposed to be “LOGIN”, but the system crashed after the “O” (Norman).

To learn more about these early days of the internet, watch this short video [4:56] featuring Leonard Kleinrock who led the effort:

Note: This video is auto-captioned. Accurate captions are available at the Amara version Links to an external site.. Use the text transcript Links to an external site. if you prefer to read.

From these humble beginnings came new ways to share information and communicate. In 1971, we had the first email message and saw the creation and international expansion of more networks, which prompted a standard for the networks that was released in 1983 (McDowall). This eventually led to the establishment of the Web, which was released by CERN (the European Council for Nuclear Research) in 1993 and led by Tim Berners-Lee (Greenemeier). Therefore, while the terms are often used interchangeably, the internet is separate from the Web: the Web can be simply described as an application that runs on the internet, facilitating a way to standardize and share information from the internet.

The Internet Today

Two major resources were developed in order for the everyday user to browse and search the internet effectively.

First is Web browsers. These are platforms that display information on the Web; Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge are three commonly used browsers.

Second is search engines. These are tools that index and search information within the web; Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are some commonly user search engines.

As you go through this workshop, keep in mind this distinction between Web browsers and search engines. While we often view Web browsers and search engines as synonymous, they are separate and distinct.

Sources

Greenemeier, Larry. “Remembering the Day the World Wide Web was Born Links to an external site..” Scientific American, 12 Mar. 2009.

Mack, Eric. “The Internet Was Born 50 Years Ago with a Nonsense Message Links to an external site..” CNET, 29 Oct. 2019.

McDowall, Mike. “How a Simple ‘Hello’ Became the First Message Sent Via the Internet Links to an external site..” PBS News Hour, 9 Feb. 2015.

Norman, Jeremy. “Charley Kline Sends the First Message Over the ARPANET Links to an external site..” HistoryofInformation, 2020.

This page "A Very Brief History of the Internet" by Kaela Casey is  licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and is a derivative of "A Very Brief History of the Internet Links to an external site." from Introduction to College Research by Walter D. Butler, Aloha Sargent, and Kelsey Smith  licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,  published by Pressbooks.