It was on Sept 2, 1969 that the internet was born in California. It was just a pair of computers on the ARPAnet—the internet’s military precursor, as Christopher Null tells us in his Yahoo Tech Blog.
“It would be several months before enough computers were added to the network to make it useful and for messages to start flowing among them, but September 2, 1969, is generally considered one of the defining dates in the Internet’s protracted birth,” he explains.
Within a year that network expanded from the West coast to the East, and then e-mail came along in 1971, followed by file transfers in 1973. By the mid 70’s the network was international with the addition of satellite links to Europe. Wikipedia’s entry for ARPAnet includes a diagram of what it looked like in 1977, as it grew with child-like internet speed.
By 1983, the ARPAnet (ARPA standing for Advance Research Projects Agency) shifted to a new architecture for data transmission, and that’s the one that’s still being used today. By 1988, commercial interests were allowed to join in on what had been only for government and education. It was called “Internet Commercial” for a short time before becoming just “The Internet”.
It may be hard to imagine, but the online world we know today all started with a wire hooking two computers in different locations together. And once scientists found a way to make them do something useful together, that connection 40 years ago changed the world—truly–with internet speed.
Tags: Internet Speed