Monday, October 26, 2009

Internet history - happy birthday!


According to the Guardian newspaper we can pick 1969 as the year the internet was born, and to celebrate they have produced a year-by-year history with side links to many of the events and personal stories of internet usage.

Why 1969? It was in this year that the first two host computers were linked together by Bill Duvall and Charlie Kline, and as part of the Guardian's history of the internet we can watch an interview with them and learn that by the end of 1969 there were 4 host computers on the Arpanet, as it was then known.

Ten years later there were 188 host computers, and another ten years on, in 1989, a Cern researcher called Tim Berners-Lee outlined a proposal to store Cern information using "hypertext links" that will allow information from one computer to appear as if it is stored on another computer. He calls his system the "Worldwide Web".

The worldwide web then starts to develop at an ever accelerating pace. Read through the Guardian's year-by-year history...

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