A brief history of the Internet

The ’50s: The Cold War

The birth of the Internet can be traced back to the middle of the last century.

In 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. In response, the U.S. government created ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), which was responsible for developing emerging technologies which is part of the United States Department of Defense because both nations were in the midst of a cold war.

The ‘60s-’70s: ARPANET

• In 1969, a communication network for the department of defense called ARPANET was established. Still, it needed to have a way for information to allow computers to talk to each other and exchange across the entire country. The blocks of data that are sent are called packets.
• The first four nodes were at UCLA, Stanford, MIT, and the University of Utah. Over the ’70s, other computer networks just like ARPANET sprang up.
• In August 1962, J.C.R. Licklider of MIT began discussing his Galactic Network concept. His idea was to create a globally interconnected set of computers through which anyone could quickly access data and programs from anywhere in the world.
• Additionally, a Frenchman called Louis Pouzin introduced the idea of datagrams (data + telegram — a primary transfer unit in a packet-switched network) around that time. Additionally, a Frenchman called Louis Pouzin introduced the idea of datagrams (data + telegram — a primary transfer unit in a…