Yes, hard to believe, but it was 40 years ago today (October 30th, 1969)that the first two nodes of what would become Arpanet connected, thus beginning the Internet As We Know It. In the ensuing four decades, the Internet would change our world as profoundly as radio and the printing press had before it. So to celebrate, we’ve compiled five milestones in the Internet's young life.
The story often goes that the Internet began as a means to maintain military command and control in the event of a nuclear war, and while that was surely in the back of everyone's mind, Arpanet was established mostly as a way to cut down travel time for computer scientist. Back in 1962, when Joseph Licklider first began thinking about computers talking to each other, a computer took up an entire room, and users had to schedule time on the few powerful computers available around the country.
By October of 1969, the first electronic message was sent from UCLA to Stanford: only the letters 'l' and 'o' (for 'login') made it through before the system crashed (the first Web outage!), but it was enough to set in motion a system that would in a remarkably short time change the world.
HAppy Birthday Internet!!! yay
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Happy 40th birthday to the Internet!
Posted on 10/29/2009 20:44
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