The Intergalactic Network at Our Fingertips

"The internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War." Since the invention of the Internet, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data. Today, we use the internet for almost every aspect of life. Since the creation of smartphones and tablets, the internet is right at our fingertips and ready for use at any moment. The question that is important is who invented the internet and what was the process?

Technology is both expansive and ever changing; due to this, it is impossible to credit the invention of the internet to a single individual. The internet was the work of dozens of scientists, programmers, and engineers who added new features and technologies that merged together into what we know today as the "information superhighway."

 "...the internet is right at our fingertips and ready for use at any moment."

In the 1930s and 1940s, Paul Otlet and Vannevar Bush created a searchable storage system of books and media. Alex Wright, a journalist for The Atlantic, writes, "When Vannevar Bush's 'As We May Think' first appeared in The Atlantic's pages in July 1945, it set off an intellectual chain reaction that resulted, more than four decades later, in the creation of the World Wide Web." 

The 1960s were the first practical schematics for the internet when MIT's J.C.R. Licklider brought to light the idea of an "Intergalactic Network" of computers. Shortly after this, computer scientists developed "packet switching."  This was a method for effectively transmitting electronic data that would be a major building block of the internet.

The creation of the ARPANET, also known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network,   was funded by the U.S. Department of Defence that used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. On October 29, 1969, the first message, "node-to-node," was delivered from one computer to another. 

The 1970s continued growth in the direction of creating the Internet with the invention of the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol, also known as TCP/IP. This was a communication model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks and was adopted on January 1, 1983.

From the 1980s to 1990s researchers began to assemble the "network of networks" that became what we know as the modern Internet. Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web which is the most common way of accessing data online in forms of websites and hyperlinks. 

The introduction of the web helped popularize the internet among the public eye and played a crucial step in developing the plethora of information to which we have access on a daily basis. Today the internet is at our fingertips at every moment. We utilize it in our everyday lives from school to work to our social lives. The internet is always available and as a society, we rely on it in many ways. Businesses use it to grow, communicate, and achieve goals. People use it to learn and for socialization. Schools use it to educate, research, and organize. The internet has advanced us and will continue to grow daily. People constantly are adding new information, websites, research, and much much more.

Because technology is expansive and ever changing, the invention would never have been possible without the brilliant minds of all that attributed in one way or another. Without their devotion, we would be without this great resource that can be beneficial to us in so many ways. So next time you hop on the internet whether it is your smartphone, laptop, or tablet just remember where it came from and the growth it will continue to have.

By Mariah Sharrow