Unlike previous technologies such as the telephone and the radio, the Internet does not have a single inventor. This is because the Internet is a dynamic system of communication whose capabilities are continuously expanding as a result of governments’ sustained investment in IT research and scientists’ efforts to improve its performance while developing new, unexpected functions.
Provided that the Internet wouldn’t exist if electronic computers hadn’t been invented in the 1950s, the history of this revolutionary technology officially began in 1958, when Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy approved the creation of a new agency, i.e. ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), whose primary goal was to provide the United States with a competitive advantage over its enemies -the main one being the Soviet Union – by focusing on space technology, solid propellants, security and communications technology (Science Node, 2017). Back then, the US defence system was remarkably vulnerable as it relied on telephone lines and cables that could be easily damaged.
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To minimise this risk, J.C.R. Licklider (1960) came up with a revolutionary idea: a network of interconnected computers that would never shut down – not even in the event of a nuclear attack (Science Node, 2018). To make Licklider’s network possible, ARPA had to find a way to connect multiple physical devices in such a way to form a reliable and logical network. After years of research and hard work, Larry Roberts, Paul Baran and Leonard Kleinrock used Donald Davies’ packet switching theories to develop a system that split complex messages into arbitrary packets, thus allowing for more efficient bandwidth utilisation and swifter responses (Navarria, 2016). The first nodes were installed at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stanford Research Institute in 1969; by the end of the year, the ARPA network consisted of four computers in four different locations (Hörnqvist, 2003).
As new nodes were installed in both the United States and other countries, the network grew significantly, thus prompting researchers to explore new ways to connect different types of networks in such a way to create a “network of networks”. In the 1970s, computer scientist Vinton Cerf found an ingenious way to connect multiple “mini-networks” across the world other; his revolutionary protocol – called the Transmission Control Protocol – made it possible for the Internet to become a global network (History.com, 2010). In the 1980s, the military branch of the ARPANET was broken off as a separate project, and ARPA began collaborating with researchers in Europe to develop a common public networking protocol. Throughout the 1980s, a relatively limited number of people – mainly scholars and scientists – used the Internet to exchange messages and data from one computer to another.
It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Internet became much more than a tool to exchange and store information. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web, i.e. an information space where all sorts of documents and resources could be stored by simply assigning them a unique code (URL) that would enable users to retrieve them at any time (History.com, 2010). Ever since Berners-Lee’s invention, the Internet has grown in both scope and scale, reshaping the way in which people communicate, socialise, buy, sell, work and experience the outside world. Thanks to the Internet, companies can easily interact with consumers and seize new business opportunities across the world, people can stay connected with their friends and family no matter where they are, and users can exchange goods, services and ideas in a quick and cost-effective manner. By democratising knowledge, the Internet has completely changed the world, which certainly explains why it is widely regarded as one of the most disruptive innovations in history.
- History.com (2010). The Invention of the Internet. Retrieved from
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet - Hörnqvist, M. (2003). ARPANET – the first four nodes. Retrieved from
http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/dig-arpanet.htm - Licklider, J. C. R. (1960). “Man-Computer Symbiosis”. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in
Electronics. HFE-1: 4–11. - Navarria, G. (2016). How the Internet was born: The network begins to take shape. Retrieved from
http://theconversation.com/how-the-internet-was-born-the-network-begins-to-take-shape-67904 - Science Node (2017). A brief history of the internet. Retrieved from
https://sciencenode.org/feature/a-brief-history-of-the-internet-.php
