The History of the

Internet

Presented by the St. Martin’s

Episcopal Technology Department
 Agenda
• Internet History
• Internet Evolution
• Internet Pioneers
• Internet Growth
• The Future of the Internet
• Conclusion
Precursors of the Internet
The Internet could not have existed
without the two major inventions of the
19th Century, electricity and the
telegraph system.
To a lesser degree, broadcast media
such as radio and television
What is the Internet?
Plain and simple:
A worldwide system of interconnected
networks and computers.
 What is a Network?
A computer network is an interconnection
of a group of computers.
Evolution of the Internet
 ARPANET
• Was the world's first operational
network, and the predecessor
of the global Internet
 ARPANET
• ARPANET was developed by the U.S.
Department of Defense. One theory
was that it was developed to survive a
nuclear attack. That theory is often
disputed by scientists.
The Internet was an Accident!
• The Internet was a result of an
unsuccessful military and academic
research program!
Why is it called the Internet?
• Short for “internetworking.”
The World Wide Web
• The original Internet provided screens
full of text
• Great for sharing info and accessing the
Library of Congress
• Text was all one font and size
• BORING!
 GUIs
(Graphical User Interface)
• GUIs added some color and layout, but
still were not very interesting.
 The World Wide Web Saved
the Internet!
• Hyperlinks were invented
www.stmsaints.com
• The mouse was invented to click on
hyperlinks
• The URL (Uniform Resource Locater)
was invented. This allowed sites to be
named.
Creation of the World Wide Web
• Tim Berners Lee brought all of this
together to form the World Wide Web in
1990.
 Mosaic: The First Web
Browser
• Very slow
• Did not handle loading pictures very
well
• Modems were very slow
• Did not give an indication of the
potential of this medium
1994 – A Big Year for the WWW
• Tim Berners Lee in develops the World
Wide Web Consortium to develop
standards for the Web
• Netscape is founded
The Explosion of the Internet
 1994 -- 2000
• The Internet exploded during this
period.
• The first commercial site was
Amazon.com.
• In 1994 the World Wide Web grew by
an astounding 2300 percent!
• Amazon saw that online shopping was
the wave of the future.
• The rest is history…
Browser Wars
• Netscape was the standard until 1998
• It folded and was taken over by AOL
• Microsoft Internet Explorer snagged
96% of the browser market
• IE has only recently been challenged by
the excellent Mozilla browser
Future of the Internet
Internet II
• So many businesses and private
citizens have come online that
academic users can't get the high-
speed connections they need.
Internet II
• Organized as a consortium
• Led by over 200 universities
• Dedicated network for educational and
research purposes
References
Romeo, J. R., Business Journal (Central
New York); 9/6/2002, Vol. 16 Issue 36,
p22, 2p
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/96/10.
31.96/Internet_II.html