Origins of the InternetToday computers are part of everyday life for many people in the developed world. Internet search engines are advertised on television. Over half the households in the UK have a Personal Computer (PC). The growth of Internet banking is said to be one of the reasons for the closure of bank branches in many villages and small towns. From our 21st Century perspective, it is difficult to envisage a world without computers. But the first computers were being built during and following the second world war, and the first PCs only appeared in the 1980s. The Internet was developed in the 1960s and 70s and the World Wide Web only came into being in the early 1990s. The history of the Internet is very much a history of our time. It is the story of men (and yes it was men) with vision and imagination to push the boundaries of knowledge further and see what could be achieved. Many of the men in this story were very young men. Postgraduate students who were encouraged to dream impossible dreams by their professors. Young men who did not know until later that their professors were allowing them to explore ideas they did not understand themselves. This is an exciting story of courage and adventure. It is almost unbelievable that something as important to all our lives as the Internet could have grown from such unpromising beginnings. It is also a story of people and personalities - some of which will be written large in the annals of the history of technology. You are going to learn about the history of the Internet from the Internet itself. But first some facts and figures.
Want to know more? Take a look at the following websites. The first two are provided as background to two recent publications on the history of the Internet. The third has been produced by someone fascinated by that history.
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