Internet History Timeline


The internet is considered a defining technology, it is a global network of computer-based communications tools. It enables millions of people with personal computers (PCs) to communicate, connect, and access information from all over the world instantaneously. The internet encompasses e-mails, newsgroups, chatrooms, and marketplaces. It has grown at a much faster pace than any other technologies like the telephone, automobile, or the printing press.


The Invention Timeline

1950s

J.C.R. Licklider, envisioned the idea that computers would allow for better communication if they were connected and were able to share information.

• October 1957

Soviet Union launched its first satellite, Sputnik.

February 1958

U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

Late 1050s

Graduate student at MIT Leonard Kleinrock started applying queuing theory to data transmission and later implementing demand access and distributed control.

1960

Paul Baran was assigned to the task of creating an indestructible communications network. He developed the concept of hot-potato routing, he then developed the idea of data being chopped into packets, each packet with a to and from address in the header.

1966

Bob Taylor introduced the concept of resource sharing, connecting a single terminal to multiple heterogeneous computers within the same network in order to save time, money, and resources.

1968

Lawrence Roberts designs the idea of smaller computers called Interface Message Processors (IMP) and packet switching to build the first computer network.

1969

Frank Heart and his team from BBN built the first IMPs for the ARPANET and they were installed at UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, and University of Utah School of Computing.

1971

The ARPANET had 18 main framework computers in the network and Raymond Tomlinson created the first email program.

1972

ARPA demonstrated the computer network in Washington DC.

1973

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn created the TCP/IP protocol and also developed the gateway that would interconnect each of the individual networks.

1983

TCP/IP was adopted as the universal standard for the Internet.

1989

Tim Berners-Lee developed a software that he then called the World Wide Web (WWW)

1992

Congress passed a law for the Internet to become available to the public and there were 50 web pages on the Internet.

1993

Marc Andreessen created the first user friendly browser to easily navigate the World Wide Web, Mosaic. The web grew by 341,000%