History of the Internet:

Part 1

Cynthia Cohen

Don’t Know Much About History… Personal, professional, small business “Other than for children in science class, or

those wanting to get jobs in software development, learning how the Internet works may not be of real value. For users of the Internet, its use is the point, not its mechanics.”

How does this affect us as librarians?

From a Seed: October 4, 1957, the

Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the world's first artificial satellite

Stats: basketball sized, 183 pounds, took 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on elliptical path.

It marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

…to a sapling… Creation of ARPA & ARPAnet

January 1958, Eisenhower gets funding for Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA

Its purpose? To be the unitary agency for space and strategic missile research

1967: ARPA funded sites all over the country. Pros: data sharing, load sharing & communications Cons: capacity, academic snobs, gov’t strong-arm

Sharing Seeds: Packet Switching What is packet switching and why is it

important? Telephone lines are constant use & tie up

resources. Business, researchers, and government couldn’t do that feasibly.

Kleinrock: packets, instead of circuits, was an as-needed basis, like a time-share

Small bursts of data intermix, which reduces overhead & use lines efficiently

First Bloom: 1970s 1971 Internet Mail introduced & used by DARPA Mid ’70s networks “sprung up” around funding ARPA computers at universities = young and

creative thinkers USENET- Unix based system by AT&T TCP/IP: Transfer Computer Protocol/Internet

Protocol created

1980s Purpose-built: closed scholarly communities Non-compatible 1985: separation from government funding TCP/IP made mandatory Commercial agencies/privatization of

Internet 1988 “Information Superhighway” NSF &

Al Gore: foundation of high speed network

1990s: Peak of Summer 1990: ARPAnet decomissioned 1994: Blueprint for Internet—IP rights, ethics,

pricing, education, architecture, regulation NSF’s Privatization Policy: Defunding the backbone.

From socialism to capitalism 1995: Internet defined as, “RESOLUTION: The Federal Networking

Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term "Internet". "Internet" refers to the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the communications and related infrastructure described herein.

Taking over like kudzu Fewer than 40 million people worldwide

were connected to the Internet in 1996—in 1997, there were 100 million

In 1997 alone, domain names registered rose from 627,000 to 1.5 million

In 1998 it only took 100 days for the Internet’s volume of traffic to double

2000 and beyond: A Sequoia? Is the Internet has now finished

changing? “The most pressing question for the

future of the Internet is not how the technology will change, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed.”

Works Cited Garber, Steve. (2003). Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space

Age. Retrieved April 4, 2006 from http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/index.html

Liener, Barry M., Vinton G. Serf, et al. Internet Society (2003). A Brief History of the Internet. Retrieved April 4, 2006 from http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml - Introduction.

Segaller, Stephen. (1998). Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet. New York: TV Books.