The creator of the Internet is disillusioned with humanity and is trying to fix everything. Who invented the Internet? When did the first computer network appear?

There are many opinions about who exactly invented the Internet. Even several people are called “parents” of the World Wide Web. Well-known media figure Gordon Crovitz considered it necessary to present his version of the birth.

“Who invented the Internet?” asked former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. And he answered it from the pages of the same publication. One of the most common versions is that the Internet was created by order of the US government for military purposes, but this legend has little to do with the truth, Crovitz wrote.

The creation of the Internet by the US government is just one of the urban legends. “The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet because it needed to maintain communications even in the event of a nuclear attack,” writes Crovitz.

According to the official version, in the 50s of the last century, during the Cold War, the US Department of Defense began to think about the need to create a reliable, trouble-free information transmission system. As one of the options, the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now DARPA) proposed developing a computer network. The project was entrusted to four organizations: the universities of California, Santa Barbara, Utah and the Stanford Research Center. They created the ARPAnet. The work began in 1957, and only 12 years later - in 1969 - the network connected the computers of the listed universities.

However, the idea of ​​the Internet itself arose earlier, Crovitz recalls. During World War II, US President Theodore Roosevelt's scientific advisor, Vannevar Bush, was part of a group of scientists involved in the Manhattan Project [the code name for the US nuclear weapons program]. Later, in 1946, he wrote an article “How We Can Think,” in which he proposed a prototype of a device that could “expand human memory” - Memex. This device was presented as a kind of “repository” for all human knowledge, amenable to formal description, and capable of quickly finding and providing the necessary information. Many technology enthusiasts see Memex's description as a prediction of the Internet.

Of course, at that time this was perceived by many as the figment of a wild imagination. But already in the late sixties, engineers tried to combine several communication networks into one “global” network, that is, in fact, to create a prototype of the “World Wide Web”. As Gordon Crovitz writes, the federal government's involvement in this project was modest - through the ARPA agency. But the purpose of the project was not to maintain communications during a nuclear attack, and, in fact, ARPAnet was not pro-Internet, if you understand the Internet as the connection of two or more computer networks, Robert Taylor, who led the 60 s project at ARPA.

“But if the Internet was not invented by the government, then by whom?” - Gordon Crovitz continues to ask. Vinton Cerf created the TCP/IP protocol, the basis of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee became the “father of the World Wide Web”, embodying the idea of ​​hyperlinks.

But the main credit goes to the company where Robert Taylor moved after working at ARPA - Xerox. It was in the Xerox PARC laboratory, located in Silicon Valley, that Ethernet technology was developed in 1970, designed to transfer data between various computer networks. As we know today, the same laboratory developed the Xerox Alto personal computer and graphical user interface.

Michael Hiltzik's book Dealers of Lightning, which tells the story of Xerox PARC, also provides information about the creation of Ethernet. At some point, the leading researchers at the laboratory realized that the government was too busy with other matters to care about connecting various computer networks into a single Network. Therefore, they had to deal with this issue themselves. At the same time, Xerox PARC employees blamed ARPA, which, while receiving government funding, worked, in their opinion, too slowly.

Later, in one of his letters, Robert Taylor wrote: “I believe that the Internet was created at Xerox PARC, around 1975, when we linked Ethernet and ARPAnet through PUP (PARC Universal Protocol).”

So, the Internet was created at Xerox PARC. “But then why didn’t Xerox become the world’s largest company?” - the author of the article asks another question. The answer is simple and obvious: the company's management was too focused on the core business to notice innovative developments and calculate their potential.

Xerox executives at the company's headquarters in Rochester, New York, were too focused on selling copiers. From their point of view, Ethernet could only be used so that people in the same office could link several computers to share a copier.

Many people know the story of how in 1979, Apple founder Steve Jobs came to Xerox PARC for ideas - he entered into an agreement with Xerox management under which he could gain access to any innovative developments of the laboratory. “They just didn’t know what they were,” Jobs later said, who helped make Apple a great company thanks in part to developments he learned from Xerox.

However, the sale of copiers brought profit to Xerox for decades. The company's name even became synonymous with the copier. But Xerox missed the boat, and in the era of the digital revolution, company managers can only console themselves with the thought that only a few manage to successfully move from one technological era to another.

In 1995, the development of the Internet came completely under the control of commercial companies. The part of the network controlled by the supercomputers of the US National Science Foundation was left with only its own narrow niche. Since this year, the commercial Internet began to grow at an explosive pace, although before that it had been “languishing” under government control for almost 30 years. In less than 10 years, companies have achieved a real technological revolution, which, according to Gordon Crovitz, once again proves the greater role of business than government.

To build a successful technology business, both factors must be present: disruptive technology and the special skills to bring it to market. The contrast between Apple and Xerox shows that few business leaders can succeed in the face of such a daunting task. It is they, and not the government, who bear the main credit.

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  In the 4th edition of the Russian Spelling Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2012), in accordance with writing practice and the decision of the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, two spelling options are proposed - with capital and lowercase letters.

  Declension

  The word “Internet” is declined according to the rules of Russian grammar as a masculine noun, no different from words such as “boarding” and “interface”, and has a second type of declension. Therefore, you should write: “on the I/Internet”, “structure of the I/Internet”.

  Story

  The first research program in the field of fast messaging was led by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, who published the work "Galactic Network" in 1962. Thanks to Licklider, the first detailed concept of a computer network appeared. It was supported by the work of Leonard Kleinrock in the field of packet switching theory for data transmission (1961-1964). In 1962, Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation prepared a report, “On Distributed Communication Networks.” He proposed using a decentralized system of interconnected computers (all computers on the network have equal rights), which, even if part of it is destroyed, will be operational. This solved two important problems - ensuring the operability of the system and the indestructibility of data that is stored on computers that are separated from each other. It was proposed to transmit messages digitally rather than analogue. It was proposed to split the message itself into small portions - “packets”, and transmit all the packets simultaneously over a distributed network. From the discrete packets received at the destination, the message was reassembled. In 1967, Larry Roberts (Lawrence G. Roberts) proposed interconnecting ARPA computers. Work begins on the creation of the first Internet network ARPANet. At the same time, in England, Donald Watts Davies developed the concept of the Network and added an essential detail to it - computer nodes should not only transmit data, but also become translators for various computer systems and languages. It was Davis who coined the term “packet” to refer to fragments of files sent separately. Between UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), Stanford Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara and Utah State University a special communication cable is laid. A group of specialists from Frank Hart from BBN began solving technical problems in organizing the ARPANET network.

  The development of such a network was entrusted to the University of California at Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Center, the University of Utah and the University of California at Santa Barbara. The computer network was named ARPANET(English) Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), and in 1969, as part of the project, the network united four of these scientific institutions. All work was funded by the US Department of Defense. Then the ARPANET network began to actively grow and develop, scientists from different fields of science began to use it.

  The first time it was possible to send only two “LO” characters (the original plan was to send “LOG”), after which the network stopped functioning. LOG should have been the word LOGIN (login command). The system was returned to working condition by 22:30, and the next attempt was successful. This date can be considered the birthday of the Internet.

  Tim Berners-Lee's co-author on the formulation of the goals and objectives of the World Wide Web project at CERN, Belgian researcher Robert Caillot, later explained his understanding of the origins of this project:

  The history of all great inventions, as has long been well known, is based on a large number of those that preceded them. In the case of the World Wide Web (WWW), it would seem in this context to note at least two paths of development and accumulation of knowledge and technology that are most important for the success of the project: 1) the history of the development of systems such as hypertext ...; 2) Internet protocol, which, in fact, made the worldwide network of computers an observable reality.

  Within five years, the Internet reached an audience of over 50 million users. Other means of communication took much longer to achieve such popularity:

  Predictions of appearance

  When the project is completed, the businessman in New York will be able to dictate instructions, and they will immediately appear in his office in London or any other place. He will be able to call any subscriber on the planet from his workplace without changing existing equipment. A cheap device, no larger in size than a watch, will allow its owner to listen to music, songs, speeches of politicians, scientists, and sermons of priests delivered over long distances on water and land. In the same way, any image, symbol, drawing, text can be transferred from one place to another. Millions of such devices can be controlled by a single station. However, more important than all this will be the wireless transmission of energy... Original text (English) As soon as completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman , delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. Millions of such instruments can be operated from but one plant of this kind. More important than all of this, however, will be the transmission of power, without wires…

  In the future, perhaps later than 50 years, I envision the creation world information system(VIS), which will make available to everyone at any moment the contents of any book ever published anywhere, the contents of any article, the receipt of any certificate. VIS should include individual miniature interrogation receivers-transmitters, control centers that control information flows, communication channels including thousands of artificial communication satellites, cable and laser lines. Even partial implementation of the VIS will have a profound impact on the life of every person, on his leisure time, on his intellectual and artistic development. Unlike television, which is the main source of information for many contemporaries, VIS will provide everyone with maximum freedom in choosing information and require individual activity.

  Prospects

  Just as commercial Internet providers are connected through traffic exchange points, research networks are combined into their own subnets, such as:

  • National LambdaRail
  • GLORIAD

  The most common protocols on the Internet (in alphabetical order, grouped roughly according to the OSI model):

  OSI layer	Protocols roughly corresponding to the OSI layer
  Applied	BGP, DNS, FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, LDAP, POP3, SNMP, SMTP, SSH, Telnet, XMPP (Jabber)
  Sessional/Views	SSL, TLS
  Transport	TCP, UDP
  Network	EIGRP, ICMP, IGMP, IS-IS, OSPF, RIP
  Duct	Arcnet, ATM, Ethernet, Frame relay, HDLC, PPP, L2TP, SLIP, Token ring

  There are also a number of protocols that have not yet been standardized, but are already very popular on the Internet:

  (eDonkey2000 network)

  These protocols are mostly needed for exchanging files and text messages; some of them are used to build entire file-sharing networks.

  Structure (services and services)

  Currently, there are quite a large number of services on the Internet that provide work with the entire range of resources. The most famous among them are:

  • DNS service, or a domain name system that provides the ability to use mnemonic names instead of numeric addresses to address network nodes;
  • Email(E-mail), providing the ability to exchange messages between one person and one or more subscribers;
  • IRC service, designed to support real-time text communication (chat);
  • teleconferences, or news groups (Usenet), providing the possibility of collective messaging;
  • FTP service- a file archive system that provides storage and transfer of files of various types;
  • Telnet service, designed to control remote computers in terminal mode;
  • World Wide Web(WWW, W3, “World Wide Web”) - a hypertext (hypermedia) system designed to integrate various network resources into a single information space;

  The services listed above are standard. This means that the principles for constructing client and server software, as well as interaction protocols, are formulated in the form of international standards. Therefore, software developers are required to adhere to general technical requirements during practical implementation.

  Along with standard services, there are also non-standard ones, which are the original development of a particular company. As an example, we can cite various systems such as Instant Messenger (original Internet pagers - ICQ, AOL, etc.), Internet telephony systems, radio and video broadcasts, etc. An important feature of such systems is the lack of international standards, which may lead to technical conflicts with other similar services.

  For standard services, the interface for interaction with transport layer protocols is also standardized. In particular, standard TCP and UDP port numbers are reserved for each software server, which remain unchanged regardless of the features of a particular proprietary implementation of both service components and transport protocols. Client software port numbers are not so strictly regulated. This is due to the following factors:

  • firstly, several copies of the client program can function on the user node, and each of them must be uniquely identified by the transport protocol, that is, each copy must have its own unique port number;
  • secondly, it is important for the client to regulate the server ports in order to know where to send the request, and the server will be able to respond to the client, having learned the address from the received request.
  Services

  Now the most popular Internet services are:

  Browsers

  There are quite a few browsers. Some of the most popular: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera.

  Languages

  Internet users' freedom of access to information resources is not limited by state borders and/or national domains, but language boundaries remain. The predominant language of the Internet is English. Russian language takes 2nd place.

  Language is one of the frequently used divisions of the Internet, along with divisions by country, region, and top-level domains. The name of the language areas of the Internet is given by the name of the language used. The Russian-speaking sphere of the Internet was called “Russian Internet”, abbreviated as Runet.

  Runet

  Runet(with a capital letter, read [ runet]) is the Russian-language part of the World Wide Web. A narrower definition states that Runet is a part of the World Wide Web, belonging to the national domains .su, .ru and .рф. -1994 became key years in the emergence of the Russian-language Internet. On August 28, 1990, a professional scientific network, which grew in the depths of the Ministry of Automotive Industry and Industrial Complex and united physicists and programmers, connected to the global Internet, laying the foundation for modern Russian networks. On September 19, 1990, the first-level domain .su was registered in the database of the International Information Center InterNIC. As a result of this, the Soviet Union became accessible via the Internet. On April 7, 1994, the Russian domain.ru was registered with InterNIC.

  Legal aspects

  On June 3, 2011, a UN resolution was adopted recognizing Internet access as a basic human right. Thus, disconnecting certain regions from the Internet is a violation of human rights.

  Main areas of use

  Electronic business

  According to research results, most Internet resources are in one way or another related to commercial activities. The Internet is used for advertising and direct sale of goods and services, for marketing research, electronic payments and managing bank accounts.

  According to a report by Oxford Economics, the total e-commerce of goods and services and the market for digital products and services are collectively valued at $20.4 trillion globally, representing approximately 13.8% of global sales.

  Mass media

  In terms of genres, online publications do not differ from offline ones - there are news sites, literary, popular science, children's, women's, etc. However, if offline publications are published periodically (once a day, week, month), then online publications are updated as new material becomes available. There is also Internet radio and Internet television.

  Thanks to the development of online media, the number of people who prefer to read the paper press is decreasing every year. Thus, public opinion polls in 2009 showed that only 19% of US residents aged 18 to 35 view printed media. The average age of paper newspaper readers in the United States is 55 years. The total circulation of newspapers published in the United States fell from 62 million to 49 million copies per day from 1989 to 2009.

  Literature, music, cinema

  Due to the ease of copying and posting literature, music and films on the Internet, the problem of copyright protection has become particularly relevant.

  Connection

  The development of the Internet, used as a means of communication, leads to the increasing spread of such a form of employment as remote work.

  Communication

  The Internet is a way of mass communication between people united by different interests. Internet forums, blogs and social networks are used for this. Social networks have become a kind of Internet haven where everyone can find the technical and social basis for creating their virtual “I”. At the same time, each user received the opportunity not only to communicate and create, but also to share the fruits of their creativity with a multi-million audience of one or another social network.

  Crowdsourcing

  The Internet has turned out to be a good tool for solving socially significant problems with the help of many volunteers coordinating their activities.

  Censorship

  In many countries, there are serious restrictions on the functioning of the network, that is, at the state level there is a ban on access to individual sites (media, analytical, pornographic) or to the entire network. One example is the “Golden Shield” project implemented in China - a traffic filtering system on the Internet channel between providers and international information transmission networks.

  Since the Internet contains information resources that are inconvenient for some governments, the latter are trying to declare the Internet as a means of mass information, with all the ensuing restrictions. But in fact, the Internet is only a medium, an information environment, just like a telephone network or just paper. In the world, there is also a state monopoly on the Internet connection itself.

  Since the Internet first developed spontaneously, it was only at the stage of its transformation into a global network that states began to show interest in its functioning. So far, the possibilities of censorship are limited, since not a single state in the world has yet decided to completely disconnect internal networks from external ones. As Tim Berners-Lee admits, “We couldn’t have done anything like this if it had been under government control from the very beginning.”

  At the same time, many information resources officially censor (moderate) the information they publish, depending on their policies and their own internal rules. This does not contradict the democratic principles of freedom of speech.

  For two years in a row (2013, 2014), Russia was the leader in the number of visits by young users to unwanted content, which means sites containing information about weapons, pornographic resources, and online casinos. Of all the children in the world who turned to sources of negative content, 16% live in Russia. India ranks second in this indicator, and China ranks third.

  You can protect yourself from unwanted content by installing filters on the user’s computer.

  The Internet today has firmly entered our lives. But few people know the name Tim Berners Lee. Meanwhile, this is exactly the person who created the Internet - the World Wide Web, without which many cannot even imagine their life.

  Timothy's biography is quite simple: he was born in 1955, in the month of June, on the 8th. His homeland is London. Tim's parents were mathematician-programmers Conway Berners-Lee (father) and Mary Lee Woods (mother). Both parents worked at the same university (Manchester) to create an electronic computer with random access memory - the Manchester Mark I.

  It goes without saying that little Tim, seeing the adults doing things, played, constructing small computer models from empty boxes. Yes, and Tim drew mainly on computer punched cards - sort of cardboard with holes, the first storage media.

  Years of study

  Tim Berners studied at the prestigious Emanuel School, where his passion for design and mathematics, his success in studying, surprised everyone. His biography has the following entry: “Years of study at school – 1969-1973”

  However, after graduating from school in 1973, upon entering King's College at the University of Oxford, Tim Berners decided to become a physicist.

  And here Tim Berners-Lee’s childhood craving for computers awoke again - an interesting fact appears in the biography of the future Internet pioneer. Taking a Motorola M6800 processor and a regular TV, Tim managed to solder them into his first computer.

  Like the biography of any mischievous boy, the biography of Timothy John Berners-Lee has fascinating pages that reveal the personality from a not entirely attractive side. Actually, it was reckless to condemn the young man for hacking the university computer database - this was just a fact of curiosity and testing his strength. But as a result, Tim received a stern warning from the rector and a ban on using a computer at the university.

  Job

  In 1976, Timothy Berners-Lee graduated from Oxford University with honors and received a bachelor's degree in physics. Having moved to Dorset, the future creator of the Internet gets a job at the Plessey corporation. Here Tim Berners is programming systems for information transmission, transaction distribution and creating barcode technology.

  In 1978, Timothy John Berners-Lee changed jobs. At D.G Nash Ltd, his responsibilities are also changing: Tim Berners now creates programs for printers and multitasking systems.

  Tim Berners-Lee was invited to Switzerland in 1980, where the future creator of the Internet works as a software consultant at the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is in Switzerland that Tim Berners, after work, begins to work on the Enquire program - the basis of the World Wide Web.

  In 1981, Tim Berners-Lee joined Image Computer Systems Ltd, where he successfully worked on graphics and communications software and real-time systems architecture. Later, in 1984, the future creator of the Internet began to develop a real-time system that was designed to collect scientific information. In parallel, Tim Berners-Lee develops computer technology applications that accelerate particles, as well as other scientific equipment.

  When asked what year the World Wide Web was created, the answer can be 1989. It was then that Tim Berners-Lee proposed to his management the idea of ​​the World Wide Web, which was based on the Enquire concept. This was the beginning of the invention of the Internet. He came up with the name “World Wide Web” himself, based on linking a variety of hypertext web pages using hyperlinks and a data transfer protocol. Previously, these protocols were used in the US military ARPANET network. This, as well as the university network protocol NSFNET, became the predecessors of the World Wide Web, thanks to which the Internet appeared.

  And now the speech of the one who created the Internet in the video (in English, but with subtitles):
  

  Birth of the World Wide Web

  In the wonderful year of 1989, the protocol received a new field of activity: it began to be used for exchanging mail and real-time communication, for commercial purposes and reading news groups. The idea, which was proposed by Tim Berners-Lee, was accepted by director Mike Sandell. But Tim Berners did not receive large funds for his work, only an offer to conduct experiments on one of the NeXT personal computers.

  Despite the difficulties, Tim Berners successfully copes with the task set for himself: he develops the first ever web server and the first web browser. The WorldWideWeb page editor, a standardized way of writing website addresses on the Internet, the HTML language and the application layer data transfer protocol owe their appearance to his talent as a developer.

  The following year, Tim Berners-Lee received an assistant - the Belgian Robert Caillot. Thanks to him, the Internet project received funding. Robert also took upon himself all organizational issues. Despite his active participation in the development and promotion of the project, the main creator of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, whose name is revered by all programmers in the world, went down in history. Robert Caillot did not reserve the right to charge fees for the use of the invention and was undeservedly forgotten.

  Later, in 1993, Tim Berners-Lee created several browsers for different operating systems, which increased the share of the World Wide Web (WWW) in total Internet traffic.

  An interesting fact is that the University of Minnesota previously developed the Gopher protocol, which could well become an alternative to the modern Internet. But Tim Berners-Lee disputes this fact, putting forward the opinion that that protocol would not have withstood competition with the World Wide Web (WWW) due to the fact that the creators of this project demanded a fee for its implementation.

  To begin with, it is worth defining what the Internet is. Internet is a system of unified computer networks. It is based on the routing of various data packets, as well as the use of IP protocols. Another definition of the word “Internet” suggests that it is a global information system.

  Most often when people talk about Internet(or they also call it the Global Network or the World Wide Web), they do not think about complex interacting systems. For them Internet- simply information that they can receive at any time of the day.

  So how did it appear? Internet? What's its story?

  In 1957, the USSR artificial satellite was launched. After this event, the United States began to think about the need to create a high-quality information broadcast system. As a result, the agency ARPA proposed the creation of the innovative ARPANET computer network. On September 1, 1969, the world's first server for this computer network was installed at the University of California, Los Angeles.

  Later, already in 1971, they designed a popular program that made it possible to send emails from one mailbox on the network to another. Within 2 years, with the connection of Norway and Great Britain to the US network, ARPANET became an international system. Of course, in 1970 the network was used exclusively for exchanging emails, but after 10 years the capabilities were expanded and data transfer protocols began to develop.

  January 1, 1983 is considered a significant day. It was from this moment ARPANET became the well-known “Internet”. Then, a year after this event, domain name systems were developed.

  As the network’s popularity grew, many realized that this project would be very profitable. Therefore, ARPANET had a competitor in 1984 - the NSFNet network. The US National Science Foundation created this network, which had higher capacity. Moreover, it included smaller networks known at that time (Bitnet, Usenet). The popularity of the competitive network began to grow at tremendous speed. More and more people began to connect to it.

  In 1990, NSFNet completely won ARPANET and rightfully took over the title of “Internet”. In addition, this year the world's first connection to the Internet via telephone line took place. By this time, people could already communicate with each other in real time, and Tim Bernes-Lee (he created the HTML language, the HTTP protocol, URL identifiers) had already designed the concept of the World Wide Web.

  By 1991 the concept World Wide Web was fully developed and put into operation. From that moment on, her popularity grew continuously. In 1995, the high-tech computers of the US National Science Foundation stopped routing Internet traffic and transferred this role to network providers.

  Global networking occurred in 1990. Many agreed to this merger due to the fact that there was no one leader, and all the networks actually remained independent. By 1997, a huge number of domain names and computers were registered on the Internet. The Internet has become a full-fledged leader among the various means that make it possible to exchange information.

  The popularity of the Internet is not in doubt. Moreover, there is even World Internet Day, which takes place annually on September 30th. This holiday was established by Pope John Paul II in 1998.

  We can name the creators of the steam engine, airplane or cinema. However, many brilliant scientists and teams from entire universities took part in the creation of the Internet. Technology developed quite slowly, so over the years, a variety of people contributed to the formation of the “global web.”

  Like most other technologies that were advanced for its time, the Internet appeared as a military development. The first attempts to create wireless communications began at the height of the Cold War. The US leadership was concerned about the USSR's success in space exploration. According to a number of American military experts, space technology would make the Soviet Union absolutely invulnerable in the event of an armed conflict. Therefore, immediately after the successful launch of the Soviet Sputnik 1 in 1957, development of a new system for data transmission began in America. All research was conducted under the auspices of the US Department of Defense and was kept in the deepest confidence. The technical departments of the best universities in the country took part in the creation of the new technology.

  In 1962, Joseph Licklider, an employee of the University of Massachusetts who also worked at the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Department of Defense (ARPA), proposed his solution to the problem. Licklider believed that communication could be done through computers. Under his leadership, work began on a project called ARPANET in the 1960s. It was planned that messages in such a network would be transmitted in their entirety, but such transmission had several serious flaws: the impossibility of interaction between a large number of users, high cost, inefficient use of network bandwidth, and the inability to function normally if individual network components were destroyed.

  A scientist from the University of California, Paul Baran, began working to eliminate these shortcomings. The result of his work was a new way of transmitting information - packet switching. In fact, each message was divided into several packets, each of which went to the recipient via its own channel. Thanks to this technical solution, the new data transmission network became virtually invulnerable.

  
  

  At the end of 1969, a historical event took place - the first message was transmitted over ARPANET. The communication session was carried out between the University of California and Stanford University and was successful only on the second attempt. It took an hour and a half to transmit the short word “login” over a distance of 640 km. At that time, only 4 computers were connected to the network, located at different universities in America. By the early 1970s, e-mail was established, allowing the exchange of messages within the network. And at the same time, the Internet ceased to be an exclusively American system. Universities in Hawaii, Great Britain and Norway have joined the network. As the number of computers on the network grew, their interaction became increasingly slow and out of sync.

  
  

  Another scientist who worked at ARPA, Winston Surf, took up the task of establishing the integration of computers into a single network. Surf developed two protocols:

  • Transmission Control Protocol (TCP);
  • and the optional Internet Protocol (IP).

  Thanks to the joint work of the two protocols, it became possible to establish connections between many computers located around the world.

  Internet before WWW

  In the 1980s, ARPANET was already a fairly convenient tool through which universities, research laboratories and institutes could communicate with each other. In 1984, the domain name system came into being. Each of the computers included in the network was assigned its own domain name. Over time, this system changed: the domain became simply a component of many email addresses, and not the name of a specific device. For convenience, user and domain names are separated from each other by the @ symbol. Later, a new way of communicating online appeared: computer owners could not only send files to each other, but also communicate in real time in special chats.

  
  

  In order to simplify the exchange of e-mail, the first corresponding program appeared in 1991. However, all this time the Internet remained only a set of channels for transferring data from one computer to another, and only leading scientists in Europe and the USA used it. A revolutionary decision that made the Internet available to all computer owners was the emergence and further development of the WWW system.

  The emergence of WWW

  
  

  In the early 1990s, English physicist and programmer Tim Berners-Lee began working on an open system that would allow various data to be posted online so that any user could have access to it. Initially, it was planned that this system would allow physicists to exchange the necessary information. This is how the well-known global network appeared - the World Wide Web (WWW). To place and search data on the digital network, it was necessary to create additional tools:

  • HTTP data transfer protocol;
  • HTML language, thanks to which it became possible to design websites;
  • URIs and URLs that could be used to find and link to a specific page.

  The world's first website was created in August 1991 by Berners-Lee himself. On the page with the address info.cern.ch, the creator of the global network described the new data placement system and the principles of its operation.

  
  Netscape browser

  Over the next five years after the creation of the WWW, 50 million users joined the network. To make Internet surfing easier, a browser was developed - Netscape, which already had the functions of scrolling and following hyperlinks. The first search engine was Aliweb, which was later replaced by Yahoo!. Since Internet speed was very slow, website creators could not use a large number of pictures and animations. The first sites were predominantly text-based and were quite inconvenient for users. For example, in order to follow a hyperlink, the user had to type on the keyboard the serial number of this hyperlink, indicated in square brackets.

  In 1992, America passed a law allowing the use of the Internet for commercial purposes. After that, all large companies began to acquire their own websites. Pages appeared with the help of which one could reserve a table in a cafe, order food or buy some consumer goods. Many large magazines and newspapers began to post their issues on the Internet. To gain access to such an electronic publication, you had to buy a subscription.

  A new milestone in the digital revolution was the emergence of social networks, which allowed people from all over the world to communicate.

  In Russia, the introduction of Internet technologies began in 1990, and in 1994, domain.ru appeared. Initially, Russian sites, like American ones, were devoted primarily to advanced technological developments and news from the world of science. The very first domestic website was a catalog of English and Russian-language resources located at 1-9-9-4.ru.