History of the Internet

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History of the Internet
July 2, 2002
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, an artificial earth satellite into space. At 500 miles up and traveling at a rate of 18,000 miles per hour, the satellite circled the globe every 96 minutes.

The U.S. didn’t want to be behind the Soviets so the Department of Defense formed ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) which was to rebuild our nation’s lead in science and technology. ARPA was supposed to build a computer network. A network is multiple computers joined together by cables sharing information. ARPA wanted to join together computers that weren’t in the same building.

In 1967, APRA developed its network APRANET. Computers at Stanford, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah were joined together by miles and miles of cable. Later, Harvard, MIT, and even NASA were part of the network. Electronic messaging (e-mail) was coming together as scientists were communicating with each other via the computer network.

Other countries were beginning to join APRANET. England and Norway joined in 1973.

In 1981, the National Science Foundation developed a network of computers independent of the APRANET. This Computer Science Network was developed so that scientists outside of the APRANET could send e-mail.

Unable to keep up with the demand of scientists all over the world, Merit Networks, Inc. joined the NSF to help manage the growing network that became known as the internet.

In 1994, telecommunication companies were forced by the U.S. government to cover the costs of the internet rather than the taxpayers. Internet Service Providers (ISP) were hired by the telecommunication companies to provide the private citizens access to the internet.