THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

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The Internet was born in the sixties, as a result of the "Cold War"
between the former Soviet Union and the US. At that time, the defense
system of the US was built up on computers, which were
interconnected. A nuclear attack on this central unit could bring the
complete defense system of the US to a standstill.
If a nuclear bomb blew up one computer, another computer could
instantly take over; thus, the computer network wouldn't go down. So,
the Internet was created by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1969
under the name ARPANet (ARPA was the department's Advance
Research Project Agency). It was built to serve two purposes;
􀁺 To share research among military, industry, and university sources.
􀁺 To provide a system for sustaining communication among military
units in the event of nuclear attack.
At first each computer was physically linked by cable to the next
computer, but this approach has obvious limitations, which led to the
development of networks utilizing the telephone system. So the Internet
systems are based on the phone systems, The Internet traffic basically
travels over phone lines. Because of this reason the Internet and phone
system are similar. The pictures and table help to understand showing
the similarities:
After invention of the Internet, other organizations, such as colleges and
universities, home and office users started connecting their computers
to this growing network to share information.
In 1972 - when the network included 23 computers - electronic mail, or
e-mail, was developed. At the end of the 1970s,the discussion groups
called newsgroups came into existence.
Find the information about inventors of the e-mail and the WWW.
Research

Transmits data such as pictures, text, sound, and           Transmits data such as voice via standard
video via different types of transmission lines                         telephone lines

Requires that each participant system have a           Requires that each participant in the system has
unique ID, i.e., IP number, e-mail address               a unique ID, i.e., phone number

Uses various types of equipment to perform many Uses various types of equipment to perform
functions-phones, computers, routers, modems,         many functions-phones, switches, and so on
and so on

                                        Comparing the Internet and the Phone System
Between the 1970s and 1983, the ARPANet was connected to further
networks. The large new network that resulted from these connections
was called the Internet since it connected several networks with one
another. Also in this year, an address system (URL) that allowed
computers on the Internet to have names rather than the numbers by
which they had previously been identified was established.
Gradually, more and more countries connected to the Internet, and by
1988, more than 50,000 computers were connected to this network. Until
this point, the Internet was used primarily by the academic world. In 1989
Web pages were invented. Web page is a page on the World Wide Web

URL is the acronym for
"Uniform Resource
Locator," this is the address
of a resource on the
Internet. World Wide Web
URLs begin with http://

A Web page is a
document designed for
viewing in a Web browser.
Typically written in HTML.

Web Browser is a
software that gives a user
access to the World Wide
Web. Web browsers often
provide a graphical
interface that lets users
click buttons, icons, and
menu options to view and
navigate Web pages.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
and Firefox are popular
Web browsers.
World Internet Usage and Population Statistics by March 2006
In 1993, a graphical Web browser was invented that allowed users to
navigate easily from one place to another on the Internet. More and more
people outside of the academic world began to use the Internet. At the
beginning of the year 2005, there were more than 300 million Internet
users