Timeline: History of the Internet:

1945- Vannavar Bush describes the memex; a hypothetical mechanical hypertext system where individuals could compress and store their books, records, and communications.

1957 - USSR launched Sputnik I- United States creates the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense (ARPA)- Technological think-tank- Space, ballistic missiles and nuclear test monitoring- Communication between operational base and subcontracters

1962 - Computer research program- Leaded by John Licklider (MIT)- Leonard Kleinrock published his first paper on packet-switching theory

1965- First “wide area network” created- connection between Berkeley and MIT

1967- Plans for ARPANET were published by ARPA

1969- ARPANET was born when 4 computers were inter-connected (UCLA, SRI, UCSB and UTAH)

1970- First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps- ALOHAnet satellite network in Hawaii

1971- 23 host computers (15 nodes)

1972- First program for person-to-person communication (e-mail)- Robert Kahn gives first public demonstration of ARPAnet (now 15 nodes) at International Conference on Computer Communication- @ was first chosen to separate user ids and host names.- First computer-to-computer chat program was developed at UCLA

1973- Ethernet was invented by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)- 75% of all ARPANET traffic is e-mail- First international connection (University College of London)

1974- TCP/IP- Each network should work on its own- Within each network there would be a ‘gateway’- Packages would be routed through the fastest available route- Network only operated on large mainframe computers

1975- First mailing list was created

1978- TCP split into TCP and IP- First Bulletin Board System (CBBS) Ward Christensen

1979- First threaded message board (Usenet) -)- MUDs - Multi-User Dungeons (Precursor to MMORPGs)

1982- Introduction of Minitel which housed the first public Instant Messager

1974-1982- No standardized competing techniques or protocols- ARPANET is remains the backbone

1981- Term “Internet” coined to mean collection of interconnected networks

1982- Smtp e-mail protocol defined

1983- Original ARPANET NCP was banned on January 1st from the ARPANET and TCP/IP standard becomes the protocol standard

1984- Introduction of DNS (Domain Name System) as BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain Server)

1985- FTP protocol defined

1989- WWW concept was proposed by Tim Berners-Lee

1990- ARPANET is decommissioned- AOL and CompuServe first provide dial-up service- Tim Berners-Lee develops hypertext system with initial versions of HTML and HTTP and first GUI web browser called “WorldWideWeb”

1990- First search-engine (Archie)

1993- Mosaic, a GUI web browser, written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina becomes the first popular web browser (showed in-line images and was easy to install)- InterNIC created by NSF to provide Internet services; Private companies transition into roles (AT&T – directory and database services; Network Solutions – registration services; CERFnet – information services)

1994- 3.2 million hosts and 3,000 websites- Hotmail starts web based email- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded

1995- 6.4 million hosts and 25,000 websites- Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access - Ward Cunningham invents the Wiki

1997- 19.5 million hosts and 1,2 million websites- First Blogs appear

1998- Google is founded

1999- Napster is released

2000- Dotcom collapse

2001- 110 million hosts and 30 million websites- Wikipedia launched

2002- MySpace launched

2003- Facebook launched

2006- 439 million hosts; 10 new computers connected per second