Internet
The internet is the wider network that allows computer networks around the world run by companies, governments, universities, and other organizations to talk to one another. The result is a mass of cables, computers, data centers, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites, and wifi towers that allow digital information to travel worldwide.
Internet Invention
As you might expect for a technology so expansive and ever-changing, it is impossible to credit the invention of the internet to a single person. The internet was the work of dozens of pioneering scientists, programmers, and engineers who each developed new features and technologies that eventually merged to become the “information superhighway” we know today.
On October 29, 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.) The message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.
The first message sent on the internet — On October 29th, 1969 Charlie Kline sent the internet’s first message “lo.” He had attempted to write the word “login,” but the system crashed before he could type the “g.”
In 1969, there were only four computers (aka nodes) connected on the internet:
By 1971, we were up to 18 computers! Most of these computers were located at academic institutions like Stanford, UCLA, MIT, and Harvard.
And just two years later the network doubled in size: 40 computers!
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn shared a vision of global decentralized internet.
They shared the belief that “information should be free” for all humans, and that access to the internet would “make the world a better place.”For them, it wasn’t enough to create an American-owned and controlled internet. They believed everyone on the planet should benefit from this technology.
Knock Knock — who’s there?
It’s Canada, France, and England that are each busy building their own national networks. And they’re not very interested in joining America’s internet.
Here you see the national networks represented by wizard hats.
At the time the international community was using the telephone system as its model for building this new network — aka each country would have its own national “internet.”
Cerf and Kahn imagined the future differently.
They feared that using the telephone system model would also mean that there would be international taxes and data transmission fees applied to data. Or worse, clunky adapters that you’d need for an American computer to speak with a European computer.
Imagine having to use an adaptor every time you wanted to visit an international website.
Think about how the national electricity grid works — and now imagine a world with roughly 195 national internets, 195 email providers, and 195 Facebook’s, etc?!
So how do you convince England, France, and Canada to join you in one global system?
The solution: create a better internet and then give it away for free. And that’s just what Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn did.
In 1973, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented the TCP/IP protocol. TCP/IP is the magic that connects the entire world together on one network. Here Vint Cerf explains their thinking at the time.
