Who Invented the Internet

Internet has become the part of the modern lifestyle that helps you find information, understand concepts, share your thoughts and even help you stay connected with every person on the earth. We have become so accustomed to the Internet that we even Google in our dreams. We are totally lost in the jungle of information that is so easily and systematically served to us through the Internet. Internet is an amalgamation of all the information in the world that is easily available in one click. Have you ever thought which person or company was the first to come up with the idea of Internet? Who invented the Internet and when? Who is that mastermind, who can be credited with the invention of Internet? The answer is, there is no one person or company that can be called the inventor of the
Internet technology. It is the hard work, research, thoughts, creations, innovations and a symphony of many minds that helped in the creation of the world wide web (WWW). Let us go into the details of who invented the internet and when.

Invention of the Internet

The Internet was not an idea of an individual, but a visionary thought in the minds of many geniuses. The first person who initiated this idea of mass amalgamation of knowledge was Leonard Kleinrock. He published his first paper on May 31, 1961, 'Information Flow in Large Communication Nets'. He understood the concept that an individual phone line and modem for each person is very expensive. One could overcome this problem with the application of packet switching that allows multiple users to connect using a single connection. He replaced the old circuit switching process with packet switching. This new concept referred to the transfer of information online and depends on the theory that is very important for the working of the Internet.

The Soviet Union had launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, that prompted the US President Dwight Eisenhower to create the APRA agency. This was to stay in the lead in the arms race and appointed J.C.R. Licklinder as the head of the new IPTO (Information Processing Technology Office) organization in 1962. Licklinder applied his vision of a galactic network and thought to commix all the people around the world with this galactic network.

As he lacked the experience in computer programing, he appointed Lawrence Roberts to help him create the Internet for ARPA. Lawrence lead a team that created theARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), in 1967. Thus, was created the precursor that lead to the development of Internet. He was the first scientist to use the full potential of the new circuit created by Kleinrock. Even today, you will find, Internet uses packet switching as the primary method for transferring data. You can read more on how to share files over internet.

The Network Working Group (NWG), held their first meeting in 1968, which was presided by Elmer Shapiro of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The other attendees of the meeting were Steve Carr, Jeff Rulifson, Ron Stough, Steve Croker and Ron Stoughton. They discussed the issues related to hosts that communicate with each other. Then in 1968, Shapiro published a report 'A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters'. Lawrence Roberts and Barry Wessler created the final version of the Interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications based on the works of Shapiro, Paul Baran, Thomas Marill and many others. Soon, Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. got a contract to design and build the IMP sub network.

The first network switch and piece of network equipment called 'IMP' (Internet Message Processor) was sent to UCLA on August 29, 1969. Thus, the first data moved from the UCLA host to the switch on September 2, 1969. The first Internet message was sent from a computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock's laboratory to the University of California on October 29, 1969. This was after the second piece of network equipment was installed at SLI. This was considered as the first Internet backbone.

The most widely used form of communication today, the e-mail was first developed in 1972, by Ray Tomlinson. For the first time one could send messages across the network to other users. In 1973, Victon Cerf and Robert Kahn designed the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol). They published it in December 1974 in RFC 675 with the help of Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine. In 1973, Bob Metcalfe managed to develop the first Ethernet.

The mastermind trio, Danny Cohen, David Reed and John Shoch splits up the TCP into TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) that can now support real-time traffic in 1978. This TCP/IP helped in creation of UDP or the User Datagram Protocol . Soon the TCP/IP was standardized into the ARPANET in 1983 and remains to be used as the primary protocol on the Internet even today. You can read more on basic internet terms and terminology and TCP/IP Reference Model.

The DNS was introduced in 1984 by Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel. The major contribution to the way one navigates and views the Internet today was by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, by developing the HTML. Soon, he introduced the World Wide Web to the public on August 6, 1991. By 1993, Internet faced a major boom and has become accessible anywhere at anytime by anyone today. You can read more on things to do on the Internet.

This was all about the invention of Internet. Many believe it was Al Gore who invented the internet. But this is one of the biggest misconception among people. He did nothing that contributed towards the development and creation of Internet. He never said or claimed to have a hand in the invention of Internet. He just supported the advancement of Internet by government funding. You can credit him for coining the term 'Information Superhighway'. So as you can see the question who invented the internet does not have a single name as an answer to it. It is the contribution of many experts from various fields who helped in creating the Internet. Internet and the world will forever remain indebted to all those known and unknown faces who chipped in their expertise to help create the virtual world of knowledge.