Have you heard of the Internet? Of course! Even if you haven't been online you can't avoid the articles on the World Wide Web, e-commerce, eTrade, eBay, and even eToys. Mainstream magazines now devote entire sections of their publications to "e-news". But the Internet is a relatively recent phenomena.
The Internet came to life as a result of the cold war. It occurred to people in the Pentagon that the US was vulnerable to an atomic strike which would wipe out its communications infrastructure. The best defense, it seemed, was to avoid having a single nexus of communication, but instead to have a scattered network of "nodes," each of which could communicate with all the others, automatically bypassing any nodes which didn't work, in order to withstand loss of any part of the network. With that ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) was born, initially as a military network. In 1969, the first four hosts were established, UCLA, Stanford University, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.
Initially, the network was designed to allow users to log on to all other computers on the network in order to share files, but in 1972, email software was developed, and email quickly became the most-used part of ARPANET. By 1984, there were 1,000 hosts, and usage had grown so much it was necessary to develop a system to keep track of the network's sites, so the Domain Name System (DNS) was created. This system allowed the nodes to be given names, rather than cryptic numerical addresses, so Stanford University became stanford.edu to the users of the system, and the DNS automatically converted that name into the numerical address of their server.
By 1987, there were 10,000 hosts, and by 1989 there were 100,000 hosts on the network, all of which were military and educational sites. In 1990, the decision was made to open the network to commercial use, and the Internet as we know it today was born.
The Internet was still difficult for the average person to use, and required a fair amount of computer technical ability. Oftentimes, logging on to different computers was done using TelNet, which gave the user a plain black and white screen. The user had to log on to each computer, and keep track of the user ID and passwords, as well as the function keys and commands for getting around their system. Also, with over 100,000 systems attached, better methods of finding information were needed, and tools like gopher, and archie and veronica were developed to find and organize files. These tools would create lists of files for users to peruse, based on the subjects they requested. At this point all documents were plain text files, with no formatting of any kind.
The real transformation to the Internet came in 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He developed a system using hypertext links which would allow users to read a document, and jump directly from that document to other related documents, by using these links. To create these hypertext documents, he developed a language called Hyper Text Markup Language or HTML. This development really fired the development of the Internet, and by 1992 there were 1,000,000 hosts, compared to 100,000 in 1989. By 1993, there were 2,000,000 hosts, and by 1994 there were 3,000,000.
In 1993, a software package, called a browser, was developed to make it easier for users to navigate the World Wide Web. It was called Mosaic, and was developed by a student at the University of Illinois, Marc Andreessen. He left the University the next year and started Netscape, which was the most widely-used commercial Web browser for many years, until it was eventually surpassed by Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Much of today's jargon was first coined in 1992 and 1993, words like "cyber" and "surfing". Also coined at that time was the word "firewall", since the growth of the Internet had resulted in the need to develop better systems to protect privacy and prevent unauthorized access to private files. Encryption systems were being developed at that time, for the same reason, including Pretty Good Privacy (PCP).
Compuserve started up in 1989, and America On Line in 1992. Initially, both of these were closed systems, where users could log on to see their proprietary content for a fee, but the popularity of the Internet grew so much that by 1995 they were both forced to add Internet access to their systems. Their users, which had been paying a fee for the information they used, were now able to get much of it for free on the Internet, a fact which completely changed the way these companies did business.
By 1994, the Internet was really coming into its own. Online communities were created, like Blacksburg Village. Cybermalls began springing up and cyber banking was emerging.
With the good came the bad, and "spam" emerged. No one seems to know why it's called spam, but the usual story is that it's based on a song which had lyrics which consisted of nothing but the word "spam", sung over an over again. In other words, it was something which filled the airwaves with useless information. Another story is that it comes from the perception that Spam is a food with no nutritional value.
Spam became news when two lawyers, Cantor and Siegel, decided to advertise their program to provide green cards to aliens by filling every newsgroup they could find with postings advertising their services. Most of these newsgroups were on subjects which bore no relation to the subject, and the users of these services were enraged at being subjected to blatant commercialism. They retaliated by "flaming" the attorneys, or posting searing, negative comments about them. Although Cantor and Siegel sent their advertising to newsgroups, the word "spam" has come to include any unrequested commercial email solicitations.
With 3,000,000 hosts by 1994, new systems of organizing information were needed, and two Stanford students rose to the cause and created a directory called Yahoo. Yahoo was a directory which primarily depended on people contacting them to let them know what information was available, which they then organized somewhat like an online encyclopedia. Other developers were creating things called "worms" and "spiders" and "crawlers" which went out and searched for information and returned lists of sites by category.
By 1995, there were 6,000,000 hosts on the Internet, and there were 12,000,000 by 1996. By this time, all sorts of commercial applications were being developed, including FedEx's package tracking services, Amazon's online book store, American Airlines' online ticket sales, and a host of others. Traffic had grown exponentially, and the cost of using the Internet was going down as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) went to flat monthly fees instead of hourly rates.
By 1997, there were 19,000,000 hosts, and the entities that track Internet usage decided they needed to find better ways to do so, so they changed they way they counted hosts, and host counts for years after 1997 are based on different methods. Tracking users is more difficult than tracking hosts, however, according the NUA Internet Survey, there were about 158,000,000 users on the Internet in March of 1999.
By 1999, almost all major business have a Web site, and many are transacting business or providing customer service online. Consumers are becoming comfortable buying products and services online, so online retailing has exploded. Email has consistently remained the highest volume usage of the Internet, and has become so pervasive that not having an Internet email address is a detriment to anyone in business. In short, the Internet has evolved in just a few years from something for "techies" and "geeks", to a part of mainstream America.
Sources:
A Brief History of the Internet, Barry Leiner, Vinton Cerf, David Clark, Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry Roberts, Stephen Wolff, published by the Internet Society.
A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks, Vinton Cerf, Internet Society.
Hobbes' Internet Timeline v4.0, Robert Hobbes' Zakon.
Keith Lynch's Internet Timeline.
A Short History of the Internet, Bruce Sterling.