Internet History and Growth

Assalamualaikum wbt and I hope all of you are in the best of health.

It seems not right if we just learn lessons and lessons without having any slightest idea about the invention of the internet; why it was created, for originally what purpose and how it is being developed from the early years until today's modern era of 21st century.

The development of our communication system has gone long way since the era of what they called as "Victorian Internet", which is the invention of telegraph. We used to associate the invention of the telegraph with Samuel Morse, but actually, the credit of inventing this communication system generally fall to two sets of researchers, Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone in England, and Samuel Morse, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail in the U.S. Mainly, the telegraph signals are sent through wires. In order to sent the signals through the telegraph wires, in the 1830s, Morse and Vail created a system code which is known as Morse Code. The code assigned letters which are commonly use (such as 'E') with simpler codes and letters which are rarely being used in English (such as "Q") with more complicated and long codes. This telegraph system was being used widely and extensively by the U.S Government during the American Civil War (1861-1865). 

Samuel Morse (1791-1872)

That was a very long time ago, and the functions of the telegraphs was already being replaced by the invention of telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.

However, the telephones are also using cable wire to send signals to each other. During American Cold War (click here to read more about the Cold War), they realised that they were facing another set of problems. How could the US authorities can successfully communicate with each other after a nuclear war? This is because, even how well the communication system is armoured and protected, its switches and wires are often vulnerable to the attacks of atomic bombs. This would obviously, destroy the communication system that they possessed. 

This eventually lead to the formation of the ARPANET in 1969. ARPANET stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. In 1969 also, ARPANET began to deliver a message from one computer to another. The message was simple. It was only the word 'LOGIN' but it crashed the ARPA network. The second computer which were located in Stanford only received the first two letters of the message. 

The network grew steadily years after years. More networks being added into the system such as the University of Hawaii's ALOHAnet and the network at the London University College. As more computer networks being added, it became a bigger challenge for the developers to integrate all of the network into one single, main network, which we now called the Internet. 

Fortunately, by the end of 1970s, a computer scientist proposed a solution for this problem. His solution is by developing a way by all computers in the computers' mini-network to communicate to each other. He named his invention as TCP, which means Transmission Control Protocol, which later, he added another two letters, IP (Internet Protocol). Hence, nowadays we refer this protocol as TCP/IP

This effective protocol has transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. The researchers and scientists used this network as a platform to send files and data from one computer to another. It was not until 1989, that a computer programmer in Switzerland Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web. This is an Internet that functions not only to send files and data to each other but also as a big network of "web" that contains a lot of information which are available for anyone who wants to retrieve it. That is the internet that we know today.

Years	Event
1969	ARPANET
1972	TCP/IP
1989	WWW created

We have a lot to be grateful for to these people, who have worked tirelessly to invent the Internet which has proved itself to be greatly useful for us. We can now search for information simply by typing away what we want to find on the Internet and millions of answers are there for us to choose from according to the relevance of the matter. Everything is really on our finger tips, we no longer need to stay hours and days and the library, skimming and scanning books. 

However, one must remembers that not all of the information that are being put up on the Internet is true and reliable. It is our job to not blindly believe any of them without doing some research to verify. 

The existence of the Internet is supposedly to help, neither to destroy us, nor to take away our 'life'. Stay connected and up to date is good, but when the things are necessary.