when did the internet go public


Recommended Posts

when did the internet open to the general public? im thinking 1992 but i want to be sure... anyone have any news articles from the period?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have an entire book based soley around the invention of the internet and all the phases it went through since the beginning, but I'm way too lazy to find it :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Internet Began 30 Years Ago at UCLA

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Internet at UCLA.

It was on the UCLA campus in 1969 that the first Internet connection was established, ushering in a new method of communication that today spans the globe and touches the lives of millions worldwide.

The federal government chose UCLA to become the first node of what was then known as the ARPANET because the faculty included Professor Leonard Kleinrock, whose research into "packet switching" provided the technological foundation upon which the network was to be built.

The ARPANET ? which later became the Internet ? was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), created in 1958 to support scientific research in the United States. Its creation was prompted by the Soviet Union?s success in placing the "Sputnik" satellite in space.

ARPA had been supporting a number of computer scientists around the country in the 1960s. As each new researcher was added, ARPA had to provide him with a computer, and each researcher asked for all the special capabilities that existed in the many unique computers that ARPA was supporting. By connecting the existing computers together via a data network, ARPA officials reasoned, the community of scientists would be able to gain access to the special features of all those specialized computers.

The first network switch, known as an Interface Message Processor (IMP), arrived at UCLA on the Labor Day weekend 1969. The UCLA team led by Kleinrock had to connect the first host computer to the IMP. This was a challenging task since no such connection had ever been attempted before. However, by the end of that first day, bits began moving between the UCLA computer and the IMP. By the next day, researchers had messages moving between the machines.

"Little did those pioneers realize what they had created," Kleinrock said, reflecting upon history. "In fact, most of the ARPA-supported researchers were opposed to joining the network for fear that it would enable outsiders to load down their ?private? computers," he added.

By December 1969, four sites were connected: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. UCLA was in charge of conducting a series of extensive tests to debug the network. Under Kleinrock?s supervision, UCLA served for many years as the ARPANET Network Measurement Center.

In one ambitious experiment during the mid-1970s, researchers at UCLA were able to control a geosynchronous satellite hovering over the Atlantic Ocean by sending messages through the network from California to an East Coast satellite dish.

Ten nodes spanning the United States had been connected by the summer of 1970. Kleinrock noted that the Cambridge-based computer company which designed the original IMP ? Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) ? never imagined there would be a need for more than 64 host computers in the network and provided only that number of connections. Today, of course, there are over 50 million computers attached to the Internet ? and that number is expanding at a phenomenal rate; moreover, traffic on the Internet doubles every 100 days.

Curiously enough, electronic mail (e-mail), which today is a major component of the network traffic, was an ad-hoc, add-on to the network in those early days, Kleinrock said.

The ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the 1980s and was discovered by the commercial world toward the end of that decade. Originally conceived and built by ? and for ? the scientific research community, it is dominated today by the commercial sector.

"Indeed, no one in those early days predicted how enormously successful and pervasive data networking would become," Kleinrock said.

when neowin was born

I sincerly hope your internet experience consists of something m:pe than just Neowin? :p

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was used in the federal government in the 1970s but then it became popular in like 1991 when internet service providers like America Online rolled out. I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep. I remember about 1992 when my father bought an ancient external modem that was extemely slow. I see a technology boom when faster and better modems came around that beat my dad's modem, even my own external modem I am using right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm... I think if you want to know when the internet went public was about the same time that AOL really took off. I mean, as much as everyone hates AOL for whatever reason, it really took the common "public" into something that was online.

I remember when the internet became public access to me. I was 12 back in 1992 and I was able to get a dial-up shell account through the local university (NMSU). So I did, through my 2400 baud modem (soon to upgrade to 14.4 for my 13th birthday, thanks dad). Pretty much all there was too do then was Mud and IRC...well, not much has changed, j/k.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:rolleyes: This recent News story may interest you ...

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/06/1...e.ap/index.html

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) -- Tim Berners-Lee, who received a ?1 million ($1.2 million) cash prize for creating the World Wide Web, says he would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his inventions.

world wide web is NOT the internet...... :rolleyes:s: its only part of it. A very small part

Link to comment
Share on other sites

world wide web is NOT the internet......  :rolleyes:  its only part of it.  A very small part

:rolleyes: Oh well ... it's closely related to his question. And World-wide sounds bigger. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In Reality the US stole the technology from Saddam Hussien back in Gulf War 1,

'Weapon of Mass Information"

and then when Al Gore became VP, he found this internet thingy and decided to Open up an ISP called AOL. (Al's Own Line) , President Clinton, made Al sell AOL.

Hope this fable helps. :) :laugh: :p :hump:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 years later...

Internet technology has been around for a while. The world wide web however came out and was made available to the public on April 30, 1993. If you have more than one computer at home, you can create a home internet, by linking the two computers together, home networking, sharing the two computers information you would have and internet, you would not be able to go to Facebook, Msn, Youtube, Yahoo or any other website.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think we can consider this topic to be answered after 10 years. Feel free to start the discussion again in a different thread.

<Thread closed>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.