INTERNET SPECIAL WHO INVENTED THE INTERNET? PART I
While the World
Wide Web was initially invented by one person, the genesis of the internet
itself was a group effort by numerous individuals, sometimes working in
concert, and other times independently. Its birth takes us back to the
extremely competitive technological contest between the US and the USSR during
the Cold War.
The Soviet Union
sent the satellite Sputnik 1 into space on October 4, 1957. Partially in
response, the American government created in 1958 the Advanced Research Project
Agency, known today as DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency’s specific mission
was to
…prevent technological surprises like
the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into
space. The mission statement has evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is
still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create
technological surprise for our enemies.
To coordinate such
efforts, a rapid way to exchange data between various universities and
laboratories was needed. This bring us to J. C. R. Licklider who is largely responsible for
the theoretical basis of the Internet, an “Intergalactic Computer Network.” His
idea was to create a network where many different computer systems would be
interconnected to one another to quickly exchange data, rather than have
individual systems setup, each one connecting to some other individual system.
He thought up the idea after having to deal with three
separate systems connecting to computers in Santa Monica, the University of
California, Berkeley, and a system at MIT:
For each of these three terminals, I had three different
sets of user commands. So if I was talking online with someone at S.D.C. and I
wanted to talk to someone I knew at Berkeley or M.I.T. about this, I had to get
up from the S.D.C. terminal, go over and log into the other terminal and get in
touch with them…. I said, oh man, it’s obvious what to do: If you have these
three terminals, there ought to be one terminal that goes anywhere you want to
go where you have interactive computing. That idea is the ARPAnet.”
So,
yes, the idea for the internet as we know it partially came about because of
the seemingly universal human desire to not have to get up and move to another
location.
With
the threat of a nuclear war, it was necessary to decentralize such a system, so
that even if one node was destroyed, there would still be communication between
all the other computers. The American engineer Paul Baran provided the solution
to this issue; he designed a decentralized network that also used packet
switching as a means for sending and receiving data.
Many
others also contributed to the development of an efficient packet switching
system, including Leonard Kleinrock and Donald Davies. If you’re not familiar,
“packet switching” is basically just a method of breaking down all transmitted
data—regardless of content, type, or structure—into suitably sized blocks,
called packets. So, for instance, if you wanted to access a large file from
another system, when you attempted to download it, rather than the entire file
being sent in one stream, which would require a constant connection for the
duration of the download, it would get broken down into small packets of data,
with each packet being individually sent, perhaps taking different paths
through the network. The system that downloads the file would then
re-assemble the packets back into the original full file.
The
platform mentioned above by Licklider, ARPANET was based on these ideas
and was the principle precursor to the Internet as we think of it today. It was
installed and operated for the first time in 1969 with four nodes, which were
located at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of
California at Los Angeles, SRI at Stanford University, and the University of
Utah.
The
first use of this network took place on October 29, 1969 at 10:30 pm and was a
communication between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. As recounted by
the aforementioned Leonard Kleinrock, this momentous communiqué went like
this:
We
set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI… We typed the L
and we asked on the phone,
“Do
you see the L?”
“Yes, we see the L,” came the response.
We
typed the O, and we asked, “Do you see the O.”
“Yes, we see the O.”
Then
we typed the G, and the system crashed… Yet a revolution had begun.
By
1972, the number of computers that were connected to ARPANET had reached
twenty-three and it was at this time that the term electronic mail (email) was
first used, when a computer scientist named Ray Tomlinson implemented an email
system in ARPANET using the “@” symbol to differentiate the sender’s name and
network name in the email address.
Alongside
these developments, engineers created more networks, which used different
protocols such as X.25 and UUCP. The original protocol for communication
used by the ARPANET was the NCP (Network Control Protocol). The need for a
protocol that would unite all the many networks was needed.
In
1974, after many failed attempts, a paper published by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn,
also known as “the fathers of the Internet,” resulted in the protocol TCP
(Transmission Control Protocol), which by 1978 would become TCP/IP (with the IP
standing for Internet Protocol). At a high level, TCP/IP is essentially just a
relatively efficient system for making sure the packets of data are sent and
ultimately received where they need to go, and in turn assembled in the proper
order so that the downloaded data mirrors the original file. So, for
instance, if a packet is lost in transmission, TCP is the system that detects
this and makes sure the missing packet(s) get re-sent and are successfully
received. Developers of applications can then use this system without
having to worry about exactly how the underlying network communication works.
On
January 1, 1983, “flag day,” TCP/IP would become the exclusive communication
protocol for ARPANET.
Also
in 1983, Paul Mockapetris proposed a distributed database of internet name and
address pairs, now known as the Domain Name System (DNS). This is
essentially a distributed “phone book” linking a domain’s name to its IP
address, allowing you to type in something like todayifoundout.com, instead of
the IP address of the website. The distributed version of this system
allowed for a decentralized approach to this “phone book.” Previous to this, a
central HOSTS.TXT file was maintained at Stanford Research Institute that then
could be downloaded and used by other systems. Of course, even by 1983,
this was becoming a problem to maintain and there was a growing need for a
decentralized approach.
This brings us to 1989 when Tim
Berners-Lee of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear
Research) developed a system for distributing information on the Internet and
named it the World Wide Web.
What
made this system unique from existing systems of the day was the marriage of
the hypertext system (linked pages) with the internet; particularly the
marriage of one directional links that didn’t require any action by the owner
of the destination page to make it work as with bi-directional hypertext
systems of the day. It also provided for relatively simple
implementations of web servers and web browsers and was a completely open
platform making it so anyone could contribute and develop their own such
systems without paying any royalties. In the process of doing all this,
Berners-Lee developed the URL format, hypertext markup language (HTML), and the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
Around this same time, one of the
most popular alternatives to the web, the Gopher system, announced it would no
longer be free to use, effectively killing it with many switching to the World
Wide Web. Today, the web is so popular that many people often think of it as the internet, even though this isn’t the case
at all.
Also
around the time the World Wide Web was being created, the restrictions on
commercial use of the internet were gradually being removed, which was another
key element in the ultimate success of this network.
Next up, in 1993, Marc Andreessen led a team that developed a browser for the World Wide Web,
named Mosaic. This was a graphical browser developed via funding through
a U.S. government initiative, specifically the “High Performance Computing and
Communications Act of 1991.″
This act was partially what Al Gore
was referring to when he said he “took the initiative in creating the
Internet.” All political rhetoric aside (and there was much on both sides
concerning this statement), as one of the “fathers of the internet,” Vincent
Cerf said, “The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without
the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President
[Al Gore] in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator… As far back
as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of
our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the
potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just
improving the conduct of science and scholarship… His initiatives led
directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve
credit.”
As
for Mosaic, it was not the first web browser, as you’ll sometimes read, simply
one of the most successful until Netscape came around (which was developed by
many of those who previously worked on Mosaic). The first ever web
browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created by Berners-Lee. This browser
had a nice graphical user interface; allowed for multiple fonts and font sizes;
allowed for downloading and displaying images, sounds, animations, movies,
etc.; and had the ability to let users edit the web pages being viewed in order
to promote collaboration of information. However, this browser only ran
on NeXT Step’s OS, which most people didn’t have because of the extreme high
cost of these systems. (This company was owned by Steve Jobs, so you can
imagine the cost bloat… ;-))
In
order to provide a browser anyone could use, the next browser Berners-Lee
developed was much simpler and, thus, versions of it could be quickly developed
to be able to run on just about any computer, for the most part regardless of
processing power or operating system. It was a bare-bones inline browser
(command line / text only), which didn’t have most of the features of his
original browser.
Mosaic
essentially reintroduced some of the nicer features found in Berners-Lee’s
original browser, giving people a graphic interface to work with. It also
included the ability to view web pages with inline images (instead of in
separate windows as other browsers at the time). What really
distinguished it from other such graphical browsers, though, was that it was
easy for everyday users to install and use. The creators also offered 24
hour phone support to help people get it setup and working on their respective
systems.
And
the rest, as they say, is history.
Theodoros II
FOUND OUT
