Moffitt

Caden Moffitt

Mr. Beliveau

History

19 May 2020

How the Internet was Invented ft. The World Wide Web

The internet; arguably one of humanity's greatest inventions, as it completely changes

how humans communicate, work, entertain, and make a living. With 57% of the world’s

population online, it’s hard to argue against the massive impact that the internet, and the world

wide web has on the modern world. However, the Internet wasn’t always as powerful and

intuitive as it is today. Let me take you on a journey of how the internet came to be the

technological giant in every aspect of living.

It’s very important to note that it’s impossible to attribute the creation of the internet to a

single person, or even a single group of people, as people all around the world helped in the

invention of it. The beginning of the internet was surprisingly quite humble, taking on the early

name of “ARPANET”, an acronym for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. (History,

Andrews, 2019) ARPANET was being invented and researched in UCLA, headed by Kleinrock,

and was funded by the US Defense Department in order to communicate easier and faster

between units. However, back then the internet was so slow that they couldn’t even transfer the

word “LOGIN” between two computers, as the system crashed after transmitting “LO”. And

while the scientists failed to transfer the whole word, they succeeded in creating the first

‘node-to-node’ network. Computer scientists earnestly got to work to further advance

ARPANET with the technology of interworking. Interworking is where computers are able to
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send data to a network, and then having that network transfer data to another network, thus

creating network IPs. However, this was a massive problem because computers spoke different

virtual languages from one another. TheGuardian says “ But internetworking posed a whole new

set of difficulties, because the networks spoke alien and incompatible dialects. Trying to move

data from one to another was like writing a letter in Mandarin to someone who only knows

Hungarian and hoping to be understood. It didn’t work.” To answer this seemingly

insurmountable problem, scientists got together in order to create Esperanto, a data language that

could be universally understood by all computers to transmit to one another. A data language is

basically a real world language, like English or French, but instead of words, computers use data

that can be understood by ‘speakers’ of the same language. This data language had to walk a

very fine line between functionality and flexibility. This language couldn’t simply be engineered

for the technology at the time, as the military is always growing and expanding. After creating

this data language, they could then connect two networks together to transmit words over from

one computer to another. Once they connected the two networks together, they vigorously began

connecting more and more networks, progressing the technology even further.

Once the internet started to gain widespread and commercial attention in 1990, Tim

Berners-Lee created the blueprints for the World Wide Web or WWW. Which then allowed for

the commercialism of the internet and the introduction of the first publicly available websites in

1991. From there one out, the internet started flooding with new users who wanted to give the

internet a try. Later that year, 2G Cellular Data was introduced to the public with the ability to

connect cellphone users to the internet with the new Short Messaging Service, or SMS

technology. And with the WWW booming came the introduction of Wireless Fidelity or ‘Wi-Fi’,
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allowing for computers to wirelessly connect to the internet and the WWW. The introduction of

Wi-Fi enabled new types of hardware, which didn’t need to be connected to the wall for World

Wide Web access. The iPhone and other smartphones helped users be connected all the time, and

made it easier for third world countries to get online. And with all this new tech, comes the big

five tech giants: Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Which ended up being

megacorporations worth billions of dollars.

And there you have it, the story of the invention of the internet. With so many people

working to a leap in technological achievement, it’s impossible to know where the internet will

take us next.

Works Cited

Andrews, Evan. “Who Invented the Internet?” ​History.com,​ A&E Television Networks, 18 Dec.

2013, www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet.

“Computer Network.” ​Wikipedia,​ Wikimedia Foundation, 18 May 2020,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network.

“History of the Web.” ​World Wide Web Foundation​,

webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/.

Roser, Max, et al. “Internet.” ​Our World in Data​, 14 July 2015, ourworldindata.org/internet.
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Tarnoff, Ben. “How the Internet Was Invented.” ​The Guardian​, Guardian News and Media, 15

July 2016,

www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/15/how-the-internet-was-invented-1976-arpa-

kahn-cerf.

“Who Invented the Internet?” ​Encyclopædia Britannica,​ Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.,

www.britannica.com/story/who-invented-the-internet.