The Internet has shaped how we interact with friends, family, and businesses.
It’s seen such exponential growth since its creation, leading to plenty of important
moments in history.
That’s why we put together this list of our top 10 Internet milestones, beginning
with the Internet’s conception.
The birth of the Internet Congratulations, it’s an…Internet.
There’s not really one main date you can pin down as the creation of the Internet.
Some sources say the Internet started in 1983 with the establishment of a communication
protocol known as the Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP).
This protocol made it possible for computers on different networks to communicate.
Other sources trace the Internet back to the 1960s with the development of ARPANET.
ARPA was the U.S. Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (hence the acronym
ARPA), and the purpose of their network was to connect different computers so information
could pass between them.
Can you believe there was a time when you had to look up information…
in a book?
The first email You can thank engineer Ray Tomlinson for your
email inbox.
I’m not sure if that’s completely good or bad.
In 1971, Tomlinson figured out how to send a message from one computer to another, leading
to email as we know it today.
In interviews, he shares that the contents of the first email were probably a random
selection of letters and he doesn’t recall exactly what he sent from one computer to
another.
Today, Statista estimates that we send and receive 306 billion emails around the world
each day.
We also have about four billion email users around the world.
Those numbers will likely continue to grow.
Invention of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee changed the course of Internet
history in 1989 when he invented the World Wide Web.
Insert applause here.
Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web while working at CERN (the European Council for
Nuclear Research) to help scientists and universities share information all over the world on devices
that use the Internet, but — as I’m sure you’re aware — the web is much more complex
now.
As written on the first website, which is actually the next Internet milestone in this
list, the World Wide Web is a “wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative
aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.”
Basically, the web uses a bunch of interconnected links on the Internet to help you access websites,
videos, and anything else you need online.
The first website Not long after Tim Berners-Lee proposed the
World Wide Web, we also got the first website.
In 1991, a website explaining CERN’s World Wide Web project launched.
It’s definitely not as complex as the websites you’re used to now, but it was revolutionary
for its time.
Today, you can find about 1.7 billion websites on the Internet, with more than 500,000 new
websites launched each day.
The first photo on the Internet You’re going to hear the name Tim Berners-Lee
again.
The man behind the World Wide Web is also responsible for uploading the first photo
to the Internet.
The image features a group of singers associated with CERN, known as Les Horribles Cernettes.
Berners-Lee got the photo from his colleague Silvano de Gennaro, who had no idea that his
image would be a piece of history.
Remember that the next time you share a photo of your food on Instagram.
The invention of Wi-Fi What’s the Wi-Fi password?
Wi-Fi uses an Internet-connected transmitter to send radio signals to different devices,
allowing you to stream movies, share memes, and spend your paycheck on things you don’t
need.
Many smaller milestones led to Wi-Fi’s popularity today.
In fact, a very early contributor to the technology that makes Wi-Fi possible was actress Hedy
Lamarr, who worked with fellow creative George Antheil to develop a “frequency hopping”
system.
This system allowed transmitters and receivers to move to new frequencies in a way that prevented
others from intercepting radio waves.
Fast forward to the 1990s, and a team at CSIRO invents the wireless local area network (WLAN),
which lets your devices connect to a network using radio waves.
In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) approved the 802.11 standard
for how Wi-Fi should work, marking the official creation of Wi-Fi.
This standardization eventually led to more Wi-Fi-compatible devices, including the one
you’re probably using to watch this video.
The first search engine If you thought Google was the first search
engine, think again.
In the 1990s, just like today, people wanted a way to search for specific files.
Enter Archie, the first search engine.
A student at McGill University in Montreal named Alan Emtage created the Archie index
for a school project in 1990.
That’s some school project.
Many different search engines began to pop up after Archie.
You had Gopher in 1991, Excite in 1993, and Yahoo! and WebCrawler in 1994.
A few years later, in 1998, the search engine you know as Google came to be.
Today, Statcounter reports that Google holds about 92% of search engine market share.
And according to Internet live stats, there are more than 3.5 billion searches every day.
The first secure ecommerce transaction While there’s some debate as to who sold
the first item securely on the Internet — securely meaning they used encryption technology to
protect credit card information — one thing is certain: This ecommerce transaction occurred
in 1994.
Back before the age of music streaming, you had to buy physical copies of CDs.
I hate that I have to explain this.
Some say that the first item sold securely online was a Sting CD, at the cost of $12.48.
Dan Kohn created NetMarket, the website that sold the CD.
Another company also lays claim to the secure ecommerce throne.
The team at the Internet Shopping Network says they used the Internet to sell computer
equipment a month before NetMarket sold its CD.
No matter who sold what first, both NetMarket and Internet Shopping Network paved the way
for online marketplaces like Shopify, Alibaba, and Amazon to succeed.
Ecommerce as a whole keeps growing, with one report sharing more than 27% growth globally.
I personally contribute to 20% of that growth.
Creation of social media Before TikTok.
Before Facebook.
Before Tumblr.
Before YouTube.
Before even MySpace… we had Six Degrees.
Referred to as the first social media platform, Six Degrees operated on the same basic principles
as modern social media companies.
You would create a profile, connect with friends, and communicate with people in your network.
Sounds a lot like MySpace and Facebook, right?
This platform was founded in 1996 by Andrew Weinreich and had millions of registered users
at its peak.
Now, Facebook holds the title of most popular social network with 2.9 billion users worldwide.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, boasts 3.64 billion monthly active people using its
family of products, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Whatsapp.
Development of cryptocurrency This last Internet milestone is for the crypto
bros.
I’m going to talk about the rollercoaster that is cryptocurrency.
Computer scientist and cryptographer David Chaum used his own privacy-focused formula
to create DigiCash in 1995, which is regarded as one of the first versions of digital money.
Other versions of decentralized currency came into existence after DigiCash, but none became
as popular as Bitcoin.
Bitcoin entered the scene in 2008 when the domain name bitcoin.org came to be.
A white paper on Bitcoin was distributed to a cryptography mailing list shortly thereafter,
published by either a group of people or a single person using the pseudonym Satoshi
Nakamoto.
No one really knows who actually published the white paper.
In 2010, the first commercial transaction using Bitcoin occurred when a man in Florida
bought two pizzas from Papa John’s for 10,000 BTC (Bitcoins).
Bitcoin’s value has seen its highs and lows since it gained popularity, and many other
forms of cryptocurrency have come into existence.
You’ve got your Ethereum, Litecoin, and — of course — Dogecoin.
That’s not all of them, but I don’t have time to list the rest.
As the Internet evolves, the number of Internet milestones we hit will undoubtedly grow.
What matters most is how we adapt to the ever-changing Internet landscape.
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