so have you ever wondered who actually
invented the Internet
some people have become Z dares thanks
to the Internet but all they did was
invent clever ways of using the Internet
so the person who invented the Internet
should be a Kersey Nair equivalent to
say God shouldn't they who should get
the credit then was it a British geek in
a swiss underground lab maybe clever
Americans threatened with nuclear
annihilation by the Russians nice idea
French scientists who decided to call
their computer network the Liddell net
interesting or was it thanks to a myriad
of smart scientists working on something
they knew was useful but didn't realise
would be so big well let's try and get
some facts straight there's the internet
a whole bunch of computer networks
connected to each other and then there's
the World Wide Web a way of making it
easier to share information using all
those interconnected computers the
Internet as we know it today was at
least 40 years in the making one popular
but wrong story is that the internet was
developed by the USA so they had a
communication network that would survive
a nuclear war according to one of the
founders of the first network the
ARPANET in the 1960s this first
networked experiment wasn't about
communication at all it was about
optimizing processor usage or time
sharing which basically meant that
scientists could share computer power -
that was because until the 1960s there
was basically no network you had big
machines called mainframes which sat in
a room and processed computing tasks one
at a time with time sharing these beer
moths could process several tasks at a
time which meant their power could be
used by several scientists at once and
obviously once you start connecting
computers together you start to wonder
about what you need to do to make
communications but
them easier scientists around the world
were trying to solve this problem so
let's look at some of the other key
concepts that were developed elsewhere
starting with packet switching in
Britain there was a commercial network
developed by the National Physical
Laboratory but which never really got
off the ground because it didn't get
funding but they did come up with the
idea of packet switching a way of
avoiding congestion in betting networks
by cutting up data of one end and
putting it back together at the other
the French also played a role they were
working on a scientific network called
cicadas but they didn't have a big
budget so they decided to work on direct
connections between computers as opposed
to working with gateway computers now as
an aside here this admittedly isn't very
scientific but according to one theory a
spin-off of their research was the word
and tackle net but you don't have to
believe it if you don't want to so now
it's the early 1970s there's quite a lot
of computer infrastructure but
communication is awkward and patchy
because different networks can't talk to
each other tcp/ip solves this problem
the tcp/ip protocols form the basic
communication language of the internet
which labels the packets of data and
make sure that even though some pieces
of the same data take a different route
they all arrive at their destination and
can be reassembled networks really began
communicating with each other in 1975 so
you could argue that was the beginning
of the internet email was also very
important it was developed for ARPANET
in 1972 most Internet traffic in 1976
was email because academics thought
electronic post-it notes were dead call
with networks that could talk to each
other
communication was becoming easier but
all this communication was just
text-based and it was pretty ugly to
look at in the 1980s the brick called
Timothy berners-lee spent time with
serve the European Organization for
Nuclear Research where physicists are
trying to work out what
the universe is made of he wanted to
manage the scientists information and
make it possible for them to share and
interconnect their work easily making
progress more likely he did so by
inventing an interface using HTTP HTML
and URLs that made internet browsers
possible he cooled his browser the World
Wide Web so he didn't invent the
Internet but he did invent the web the
first-ever website which he created was
at CERN in France in August 1991
so once the initial infrastructure was
in place the key technologies have been
invented internet message boards
exploded in the 1980s the phone
companies saw the commercial potential
of digital communication web browsers
spread like wildfire in the early 1990s
and ordinary people discovered email
then the internet expanded rapidly and
steadily and became workable for the
masses from about 1995 hold on didn't US
Vice President Al Gore invent the
Internet ernõ and if you read what he
said exactly you'd know he never claimed
to have done but many people credit him
with energetically pushing legislation
that encouraged the spread of the
internet the internet exists because we
need to communicate and most of us like
doing it that's why humans have become
the dominant species on earth you could
argue that the Internet is a natural
evolutionary step and a manifestation of
that need it wasn't invented by anyone
in particular but when the building
blocks were put together by all those
cool scientists from all over the place
the internet became a communication tool
a retail tool a research tool a
propaganda tool a spying tool a shopping
tool her dating tool an entertainment
tool and a way of skyping off work while
making it look like you're working or
studying which is what you may be doing
ultimately though you're communicating
especially if you leave a comment and
that might make you a better human being