The History and Evolution of the Internet: A Deep Dive
The first question which perhaps strikingly pops into our mind is “Who started the Internet?” Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed the Internet in the 1970s. They invented the design of what we know today as the “Internet”. Another research experiment done by them was “ARPANET” which stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. This was initially condemned as the source of communication systems for the Defense team of the United States of America — a network that would also survive a nuclear attack. It is configured by becoming one of the successful nationwide experimental packet networks. But the question which emerges here is when was the first internet started? It is paradoxically believed that on 6 August 1991, the World Wide Web was opened to the public.
Father of the Internet: Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee was the man who developed the World Wide Web, the defining of HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) used to create web pages and URLs (Universal Resource Locators). The development of WWW, HTTP, HTML, and URLs took place between 1989 and 1991. Tim Berners-Lee was born in London and he graduated in Physics from Oxford University in 1976. Presently, Tim Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, the group that sets technical standards for the web.
Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf is also known as an internet daddy other than Tim Berners-Lee. After dropping out of high school for 10 years, he began co-designing and co-developing the protocols and structure of what became the Internet.
Evolution of the Internet
The Internet came into existence in the 1990s. The emergence of the Internet can be tracked through the number of businesses and homes that started changing the way they worked and started connecting their laptops and other devices to the Internet. However, the concept of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) as we know it today, was created only during this time. This meant that people could access the same web pages on their devices now and share information.
Internet users have led to dramatic growth since its inception. As a consequence, the various computer networks have grown exponentially too. The initial started with connecting less than ten computers. Today, 440 million computers can be connected directly, making life easier for people across the globe. Sharing information and knowledge has become much easier for the people who have access to the Internet. The country with the highest number of internet users is China, with 1.4 billion users, followed by India with 1.3 billion and the United States of America with 0.3 billion users.
Hence, the history and evolution of the Internet mark a significant aspect in the lives of people across the globe.
