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Brief History Of The Internet

Description: First came computers, and then came the internet. When you look back at the history of how the internet came to be, it's amazing to chart what has been and continues to be an awe inspiring journey.

In 1957, a government agency was formed that would start the ball rolling towards the internet we know today. The people within that agency couldn't have known how their work was going to influence the progression of computers to the point we have reached some forty years later, but ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency, as it was known) is where everything began.

Within a decade the agency had made enough progress that the idea of separate computers being linked in some way was beginning to look like a possibility. At first the idea was to link two computers so that the user of one could access information on the second computer without having to touch that machine.

From there the idea progressed to creating small networks of computers. Universities in America got in on the act and started creating networks between computers in each individual university. It was only a matter of time before technology cracked the task of connecting the different universities together, and finally in 1973 - some sixteen years after ARPA was created, a relatively tiny leap in the progression of mankind - the University College of London in the UK made a connection with the universities networks in the US.

Eventually the process of networking computers spread beyond the universities and started connecting businesses together as well. Hosts and domains grew every day, and it's a little surprising given the amount of domains in existence today that the first one was registered only a little over two decades ago.

From those beginnings the internet began to spread at an incredible rate. It soon made its way into the homes of people all around the world, to the point where far more people had internet access than those who didn't. Nowadays broadband has made internet access even easier and faster, and new technology is constantly being developed to enhance the services we have now become used to.

It seems hard to believe that it's only been thirty five years since a computer in the US made a connection with a computer in the UK. From those humble beginnings came a way of life that it's hard to imagine being without. Where the internet goes from here remains to be seen.

Will the next thirty five years be just as exciting?