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What Is the Internet?

...a modest attempt at an Internet chronology.

1969: ARPAnet

The same month as Woodstock, an equally radical event: the first packet switching network. A government and university program developed a telecomputing network that would withstand a military emergency.

1970s & 1980s: NSFnet

The network of university computers expands to become the Internet, a network of networks, both computer and human, under the auspicies of the National Science Foundation. The Internet becomes an important means of communication, data collection, and research publication among universities across the country and eventually the world.

• Listservs
• File Transfer (FTP)
• Databases
• Usenet Newsgroups
• Gophers

Private BBSs & Commercial Bibliographic Databases

The same telecommunications technology, now used for private and commercial systems. Dialog was the first of many online bibliographic databases serving academic, law, and medical libraries with up to date bibliographic access to research journals.

1980s: Free-Nets

The electronic "town hall" linking local government, schools, public libraries, community groups, and private individuals. The first Free-Net was established in Cleveland as a telecommunications equivalent of public radio or TV.

1980s: Commercial Online Services

First CompuServe, then America Online, Prodigy, and others.... Packaged a variety of online services in a single package with more user friendly interfaces for home computer users. Commercial online services began attracting the business and entertainment worlds with the advertising and promotion potential of telecommunications.

1994 to the Present: The World Wide Web

With the introduction of a hypertext system for linking pieces of the Internet together and shareware browsers Mosaic and Netscape, all of the separate pieces of the 'net come together. With the (relatively) easy to learn programming language, HTML, anyone can be an author on the web!