A Modern History of Computers and the Internet

A network is collection of machines (or people) that  share resources. Computer networks are connections (usually made by wires or radio signals) that allow the computers to share files, printers and other resources. 

The Internet is a giant network that wraps around the world.

1969 - ARPANet Started by the US Department of Defense for research into networking. It is the original basis for what now forms the Internet. 

1969, April 7 - The first RFC (Request For Comment), RFC0001 published. RFCs are papers which are used to develop and define protocols for networking, originally the basis for ARPANet. There are now thousands of them applying to all aspects of the Internet. Collectively they document everything about the way the Internet and computers on it should behave, whether it's TCP/IP networking or how email headers should be written there will be a set of RFCs describing it.

1970 - The Internet was formed, although at the time it was a military network called ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). It was opened to non-military users later in the 1970s and many universities and large businesses went on-line. US Vice-president Al-Gore was the first to call it the Information superhighway.

1972 - The first international connections to ARPANet are established. ARPANet later became the basis for what we now call the Internet.

1980 - IBM hires Paul Allen and Bill Gates to create an operating system for a new PC. The pair buy the rights to a simple operating system manufactured by Seattle Computer Products and use it as a template. IBM allows the two to keep the marketing rights to the operating system, called DOS.

1981 - August 12th marks the birth of the IBM PC. The PC was significant because the hardware design was open. That is,  other manufacturers were able to build computers and components that would (usually) interoperate with each other. In addition, the software that ran on this open hardware was licensed from Microsoft to many manufacturers. The success of the IBM PC forced Apple and others to change their focus. Most companies whose computers were not based on the PC architecture went out of business or switched over to the PC architecture. The decision by IBM to open their architecture allowed endless companies to create computer hardware and software that was interoperable, sharing a common platform, now known simply as the "PC." By 2006, even Apple Computer had followed IBM's lead and adopted Intel CPUs and built Macs that can boot Microsoft Windows.

1982 - The TCP/IP Protocol established, and the "Internet" is formed as a connected set of networks using TCP/IP. The Commodore 64 begins to be sold with 64 kilobytes of random-access memory and containingMicrosoft BASIC and dropping in price from $600 to $200 allows it to become the best-selling computer to date (Note: My family owned one of these. - Kevin). In the same year, Apple Computer is the first personal computer manufacturer to hit the $1 billion mark for annual sales.

1984 - The now famous Apple commercial is shown during the Super Bowl, the commercial introduces the Apple Macintosh, a computer with graphical user interface instead of needing to type in commands. In six months sales of the computer reach 100,000 (Note: My family owned one of these, too. - Kevin).

 

1989 - World Wide Web is invented by Tim Berners-Lee, who saw the need for a global information exchange that would allow physicists to collaborate on research (he was working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, at the time). The Web was a result of the integration of hypertext and the Internet. The hyperlinked pages not only provided information but provide transparent access to older Internet facilities such as ftp, telnet, Gopher, WAIS and USENET. He was awarded the Institute of Physics' 1997 Duddell Medal for this contribution to the advancement of knowledge. The Web started as a text-only interface, but NCSA Mosaic later presented a graphical interface (see 1993).

1993 -  A year in which web traffic over the Internet increased by 300,000%.

Commercial providers were allowed to sell Internet connections to individuals. Its use exploded, especially with the new interface provided by the World-Wide Web (see 1989) and NCSA Mosaic.

1995, December 28 – Internet censorship challenged: CompuServe blocks access to over 200 sexually explicit sites, partly to avoid confrontation with the German Government. Access to all but 5 was restored on Feb. 13 1996. 

1995, December - JavaScript development announced by Netscape.

1996, January - Netscape Navigator 2.0 released. Netscape 2.0 is the first browser to support JavaScript, a way to incorporate small programs into web pages. 

1998, June 25 - Microsoft released Windows 98. U.S. anti-trust authorities try to block its release since the new OS interlaces with other programs such as Internet Explorer and so effectively closes the market of such software to other companies. Specifically, Netscape no longer has any market because Internet Explorer is included with 90% of new computers sold.

2000-2001 – Microsoft loses its case with the US Department of Justice and is awaiting appeals. Open source software (e.g. Linux) becomes more popular, taking away market share that would have likely belonged to Microsoft Windows NT. Open source software is made possible by the existence of the online community.

1. (2 Parts) What was the original basis for the Internet called? Why was it started?

2. Which company and computer created the "universal platform" shared by nearly every computer manufacturer today, and when did this happen?

3. Using two sentences or more, describe what the WWW actually is, including who is credited with its invention.

4. Which company and computer introduced the graphical user interface, and when was it famously introduced?

5. When did Internet usage really “explode,” and why?