The history of the internet and the web is so rich that it would be difficult to write such an exhaustive and fascinating story. Explore the story, discovering or remembering certain facts and facts. The web is not the same as the internet, even if the two are closely linked. So we can't talk about the Web without the Internet, while the reverse could be true. Here are some key facts to help you understand the evolution of the phenomenon.
The World Wide Web, that brilliant invention by Tim Berners-Lee, has transformed the Internet so much that it has become synonymous with some. And yet, the Web is just one of many applications running on a TCP / IP protocol. But it is, without a doubt, the one that, along with e-mail, has been the most massively adopted by the general public because it is so easy to use. It is impossible to take a tour of the technologies, sites and services that have (already) marked the long history of the internet. But here are the main moments.
1962: The beginnings In 1962, in the context of the Cold War, the history of the Internet has its roots. At that time, the US government was looking to develop an invulnerable communications network. After several years of studies, the envisaged solution largely recommends the establishment of a decentralized network, presenting a network structure, each node (computer) being able to send (upload), but also receive (download) messages. This is how the internet can be described in a nutshell.
But we can't talk about who invented the Internet without reviewing some data about infrastructure, the history of computers and their evolution. It can be considered that the first computer in the world, in the primary sense of the word, dates from the third millennium BC. How did the computer appear and especially why? Over the centuries, the goal of humans has been to calculate faster and minimize the margin of error. Out of this need came the first computer invented.
Computer history tells us that in 1834, Charles Babbage developed a machine that, using perforated sheets, performed various operations. Is this the inventor of the modern computer? In the first part of the twentieth century, the advancement of mathematics allowed a new breath in computer research. This led, in 1938, to the world's first programmable computer that uses the binary: Z3, created by the German Konrad Zuse. From here, the history of the computer goes along with the internet.
1969: ARPA It's hard to say who created the internet. For reasons of security and reliability in the exchange of information, the advent of the Internet was aimed at segmenting messages into small packets sent separately to the recipient, each packet being able to follow a different path in the network, but always trying to get closer to the destination. In this context, upon arrival at the destination, the packets must be assembled in the correct order to reconstruct the message. This is called packet-switching technology.
In late 1969, ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), an organization created by the U.S. Department of Defense and commissioned to study the project, assembled four remote computers (three in California and one in Utah), each with packet technology. -switching.
1971-1972: The birth of e-mail After solving several technical difficulties, Arpanet becomes truly operational, allowing data transfers, as well as long and laborious calculations to be performed simultaneously on multiple remote computers. But, very early on, a problem arises: it seems that the main information traffic in the small network has nothing to do with scientific or military data, but concerns personal discussions between scientists, especially gossip!
Thus appeared the idea of e-mail, the next step in the evolution of the Internet. In 1971-1972, the first program for sending and receiving electronic messages (SNDMSG and Readmail) was developed, as well as the first mail management software (classification, reply, save, etc.). This is when the @ sign was entered on the email address we use today. In 1973, e-mail accounted for 75% of all traffic on Arpanet.
1974: The Universal Protocol Since the advent of the Internet in the 1970s, the number of machines connected to Arpanet has increased. In 1971, there were about twenty; in 1972, around forty, the evolution of connected computers was also noticed. The growth of the network of cars connected to the network can be done only on the condition that all computers communicate in the same way, this being one of the disadvantages of the internet. In addition, these machines had to be equipped with software that manages information and packages according to the same rules and conventions, according to the same protocol. In parallel with the growth of Arpanet, other independent Internet networks have emerged (such as Ethernet or Telnet), which use other protocols.
Vincent Cerf of Stanford University and mathematician Bob Kahn, who worked for Darpa in 1974, laid the groundwork for a new protocol, which they named TCP / IP. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is responsible for segmenting the message into packets and reorganizing them at reception. IP (Internet Protocol) is responsible for routing packets from the computer to the destination. Indeed, the internet was about to be born.
The Internet became a reality with the establishment of TCP / IP in 1978, a possible answer to the question of the year in which the Internet appeared. Six years later, the number of computers connected to the Internet exceeds the 1000 mark and CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) adopts TCP / IP as the protocol in its own internal network, Cernet.
March 12, 1989: the first version of the Web "Vague, but promising." This is what Mike Sendall, then head of Tim Berners Lee at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research), commented on the document that the British computer scientist placed on his desk. A multi-page project, simply called " Information Management: A Proposal" in which Tim Berners Lee imagines a reorganization of the databases of the prestigious nuclear research center and opens the first chapter of web history.
The project provided a distributed information system and used non-linear reference technologies, especially hypertext, to connect the countless scientific papers of the CERN network. With this new information about the internet, without realizing it, he had just laid the foundations of one of the greatest technological revolutions of the century.
December 20, 1990: the first site The first site and web server were born on the NeXT computer, which Sendall donated to Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the "modern" Internet. The site, which could only be viewed on CERN's internal network, is displayed on a tool called a "browser", which Tim Berners Lee calls WorldWideWeb. His address was info.cern.ch. Tim Berners-Lee, who now works with Belgian Robert Caillau, later defined the basics of the technology: its two basic protocols, HTTP (for locating and connecting documents) and HTML (for creating pages). The revolution begins now.
August 6, 1991: The web is open to everyone Tim Berners-Lee announces the project on Usenet's alt.hypertext group – the first Internet forums where pioneers have been trading since 1979. His message about the Internet begins: "The World Wide Web Project combines information retrieval and hypertext techniques to create a simple information system, but still powerful and complete. “. A few lines later, Lee writes "try it", providing the address to download a browser and the URL of a test site. This is the first time that Internet users can use it outside CERN.
Also in this stage, the .ro domain is registered, when the Internet appeared in Romania. In 1992, the first block of IP addresses was allocated, and in February 1993, ROTLD (Romania Top Level Domain) appeared.
April 30, 1993: techno now public If we read all about computers a few months after the launch of the Mosaic browser, which aroused interest in www, CERN launched its project in the public domain and published its source code. Now accessible to all and free, the Web has seen its use explode very quickly on the Internet. In just one year, it went from about 500 Web servers to 10,000 by the end of 1994. Launching Netscape, the first truly universal public browser.
March 2019: over 4 billion users The benefits of the Internet are so great that the number of monthly web users is a whopping 4.1 billion. Therefore, more than half of humanity accesses it every month, which leads, day by day, to the evolution of computers. Almost any other information you can find only by accessing on your tablet or other device the most comprehensive library of all time: the Internet.
