Key Events in Internet History

1969

A Small "Net" of Computers - At first the Internet is small - only four computers. The people who invent this network are part of the Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They join computers at four universities in the United States to try Paul's ideas. This network is called ARPANET.

1980

A Virus! - The first virus makes the ARPANET stop working!

1994

Banner Ads- The first Internet banner ad is on hotwired.com. It is for AT&T. Today, many businesses put ads onto web pages to let people know about their products.

1997

Blog - Jorn Barger coins the term web log, which is later shortened to blog. Blogs are similar to online diaries, posted in reverse chronological order. The entries are about experiences, opinions, or advice. Readers comment upon the entries. Today, there are millions of blogs.

1973

Can you Hear Me Now? - The invention of the Network Voice Protocol lets people have conference calls. A conference call is a group of people talking about a topic in "real time." Each person is at their computer using a microphone.

2008

Group Deals - Groupon offers its first group coupon. Subscribers purchase a deal that becomes available if a certain number of people sign up for the offer.

1979

How do you Feel? - Kevin Mackenzie suggests using symbols -) to tell how you feel when writing a message. People do not like the idea. A few years later Scott Fahlman changes Kevin's idea to :-) and :-( . This idea catches on!

1964

I have an Idea - Paul Baran and other people who work at the RAND Corporation come up with ideas for computers to send and receive messages. The technology they invent cuts messages into small packets. The packets take different paths to get from one computer to another reassembling at their destination.

1988

Inter-Relay-Chat - Jarkko Oikarinen invents inter-relay-chat (IRC). This technology lets people go to "chat rooms" to meet others from all over the world.

1995

JAVA - Sun Microsystems invents JAVA. JAVA is a code that makes items move on a web page.

1972

Let's Chat! - The first computer-to-computer chat takes place between a person at Stanford University and a person at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) in Massachusetts. Today you can "Instant Message" or IM friends using programs such as Messenger.

1982

Let's Connect- TCP and IP let many different types of networks join the Internet. In the years to follow large networks form such as NSFNET (1986). This network joins people from all over the world to the Internet.

1975

Mass Email - Steve Walker invents the first mailing list. This lets many people get the same mail message. At first, each address had to be added one at a time. Today, it is easy to send one message to many people.

1999

News Feeds - The idea to create a news feed that would automatically notify subscribers of recent postings was conceived. It would take many years, for this technology to become popular with the masses. However, today it is included in many web browsers. Peer to Peer (P2P) File Sharing - The release of Napster, a file sharing system, makes P2P popular. P2P creates a network of individual nodes or devices called "peers." People search for a file on the network and download it from multiple peers at one time. This has created legal concerns about copyright law and downloading music, movies, and other media.

1998

PayPal - The idea for a financial service that transfers money from a purchaser to a seller, while keeping information such as credit card number private is conceived. Later PayPal is bought by eBay. Today, it continues to be a secure way to make online purchases.

2004

Podcast - The word podcast is first used to describe an Internet audio or video broadcast. Today this term is used to describe a lecture, announcement, or commentary that is downloaded from the Internet to subscribers' computers or hand-held devices. Facebook - The social network Facebook is created allowing people to join its online community to share messages, photos, videos, links, and more with members.

1990

Search Engines - Alan Emtage invents Archie. Archie is a system that can find files on the Internet that match a keyword. Later, Gopher is invented. Over the years many search engines are made such as Lycos, Yahoo, and Google.

2010

Sharing Apps - The photo sharing network Instagram is released. Today people share photos, bookmarks, and videos using apps such as Pinterest, Vine, and Snapchat.

1992

Surfs Up! - The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly. Jean worked as a public librarian for many years before she wrote a book called Surfing the Internet. The first MBONE audio and video broadcast to multiple computers simultaneously occurs. Eventually, the technology evolves to allow live streaming of radio and television broadcasts, called webcasting.

2006

Twitter - The first 140-character text message or "tweet" is sent by Jack Dorsey, inventor of Twitter. Today millions of tweets are sent.

1993

Web Browser-One of the first graphical web browsers, "Mosaic" is released. Later, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are invented. The inventors of the WWW share for free the software to run a web server, basic browser, and a library of HTML code. This allows the WWW to grow.

1989

World Wide Web - Tim Berners-Lee working at CERN writes a proposal for a communication system that creates links to documents online. A few years later this idea becomes the World Wide Web (WWW).

1971

You have Mail - Ray Tomlinson invents a program that lets people send mail electronically. Later, he picks the @ symbol for email addresses because it means "at." Over the years, programmers invent email programs to reply and forward messages, attach files, and more.

2005

YouTube - A video sharing site is created that allows people to post and view videos. Today, billions of people post videos to YouTube.

20003

iTunes Store - With the launch of the online store people could purchase and download music legally. Later the store would expand to include TV shows, audiobooks, movies, and other media. Today, the number of files purchased from the store is in the billions.

1984

www.domain.com - The DNS or Domain Name System is invented. DNS is a list of places on the Internet. A year later, people must register to get a domain name such as www.business.com, www.government.gov, or www.school.edu. The domain acts just like your phone number or home address. It tells people how to get to a spot on the Internet.