Who invented the Internet?
Updated: 04/26/2017 by Computer Hope
A single person did not create the
Internet that we know and use today. Below is a listing of different people who have helped contribute to and develop the Internet.
The idea
The initial idea of the Internet is credited to
Leonard Kleinrock after he published his first paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" on May 31,
1961.
In
1962,
J.C.R. Licklider became the first Director of
IPTO and gave his vision of a galactic network. Also, with ideas from Licklider and Kleinrock,
Robert Taylor helped create the idea of the network that later became
ARPANET.
Initial creation
The Internet as we know it today first started being developed in the late 1960's in California in the United States.
In the summer of
1968, the Network Working Group (NWG) held its first meeting, chaired by
Elmer Shapiro, at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Other attendees included
Steve Carr,
Steve Crocker,
Jeff Rulifson, and
Ron Stoughton. In the meeting, the group discussed solving issues related to getting hosts to communicate with each other.
In December
1968,
Elmer Shapiro with SRI released a report "A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters." Based on this and earlier work by
Paul Baran,
Thomas Marill and others,
Lawrence Roberts and
Barry Wessler created the Interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) was later awarded the contract to design and build the IMP subnetwork.
General public learns about Internet
The UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) put out a press release introducing the public to the Internet on July 3,
1969.
First network equipment
On August 29,
1969, the first network
switch and the first piece of network equipment called "IMP" (Interface Message Processor) is sent to UCLA.
On September 2,
1969, the first data moves from the UCLA host to the switch. The picture to the right is Leonard Kleinrock next to the IMP.
The first message and network crash
On Friday October 29,
1969 at 10:30 p.m., the first Internet message was sent from computer science Professor Leonard KleinRock's laboratory at
UCLA, after the second piece of network equipment was installed at
SRI. The connection not only enabled the first transmission to be made, but is also considered the first Internet
backbone.
The first message to be distributed was "LO", which was an attempt at "LOGIN" by
Charley S. Kline to log into the SRI computer from UCLA. However, the message was unable to be completed because the SRI system crashed. Shortly after the crash, the issue was resolved, and he was able to log into the computer.
E-mail is developed
Ray Tomlinson sends the first network
e-mail in 1971. It's the first messaging system to send messages across a network to other users.
TCP is developed
Vinton Cerf and
Robert Kahn design
TCP during
1973 and later publish it with the help of
Yogen Dalal and
Carl Sunshine in December of
1974 in
RFC 675. Most people consider these two people the inventors of the Internet.
First commercial network
A commercial version of
ARPANET, known as
Telenet, is introduced in
1974 and considered to be the first Internet Service Provider (
ISP).
Ethernet is conceived
Bob Metcalfe develops the idea of
Ethernet in
1973.
The Modem is introduced
Dennis Hayes and
Dale Heatherington released the 80-103A Modem in
1977. The
Modem and their subsequent modems become a popular choice for home users to connect to the Internet and get online.
TCP/IP is created
In
1978, TCP splits into
TCP/IP, driven by
Danny Cohen,
David Reed, and
John Shochto support real-time traffic. The creation of TCP/IP help create
UDP and is later standardized into ARPANET on January 1,
1983. Today, TCP/IP is still the primary
protocol used on the Internet.
DNS is introduced
Paul Mockapetris and
Jon Postel introduce
DNS in
1984, which also introduces the
domain name system. The first Internet domain name,
symbolics.com, is registered on March 15,
1985 by Symbolics, a Massachusetts computer company.
First commercial dial-up ISP
The first commercial Internet Service Provider (
ISP) in the US, known as "The World", is introduced in
1989. The World was the first ISP to be used on what we now consider to be the Internet.
HTML

In
1990,
Tim Berners-Lee develops
HTML, which made a huge contribution to how we navigate and view the Internet today.
WWW
Tim Berners-Lee introduces
WWW to the public on August 6,
1991 and becomes available for everyone August 23, 1991. The World Wide Web (WWW) is what most people today consider the "Internet" or a series of sites and pages that are connected with links. The Internet had hundreds of people who helped develop the standards and technologies used today, but without the WWW, the Internet would not be as popular as it is today.
First graphical Internet browser
Mosaic is the first widely used graphical World Wide Web browser developed and first released on April 22,
1993 by the
NCSA with the help of
Marc Andreessen and
Eric Bina. A big competitor to Mosaic was
Netscape, which was released a year later. Today's Internet browsers we use today, e.g.
Internet Explorer,
Chrome,
Firefox, etc., got their inspiration from the Mosaic browser.
Java and JavaScript
Originally known as
oak,
Java is a programming language developed by
James Goslingand others at
Sun Microsystems in
1995. Today, Java is still used to create
Internetapplications and other
software programs.
JavaScript was developed by
Brendan Eich in
1995 and originally known as
LiveScript. LiveScript was released with Netscape Navigator 2.0 and renamed to JavaScript with Netscape Navigator 2.0B3. JavaScript is an
interpreted client-side scripting language that allows a web designer the ability to insert code into their web page.
Related Questions
That is a great overview, but who are the key inventors of the Internet?
If you had to isolate the key inventors of the Internet, it would have to be two people:
Vinton Cerf and
Robert Kahn. The
WWW, which is different from the
Internet, but what most people think of as the "Internet", was invented later by
Tim Berners-Lee.
Lakini Mshana atusaidie inawezekana Internet ilianza na wale nanii wa vibuyu na ungo.