Birth of the Internet
On January 1, 2021, while the world ushered in a new year, the technology world was celebrating something entirely unknown to technophobes and the general public alike – the 38th birthday of the Internet. On January 1, 1983, the Internet's maiden voyage into the world of global communication and information sharing took place, and a standard communication protocol between computers was born.
It may be surprising to learn the Internet has been around much longer than 38 years. The first digital computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIC), was created in 1945 by the Army, Ordnance Corps, Research and Development Command under Major General Gladeon M. Barnes and designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckhert as a way to solve complex, wartime ballistics tables. However, ENIC was not able to communicate with another computer. The ENIC's first program was a study on the atomic bomb's feasibility. It was 1000 times faster than electro-mechanical machines, and it calculated a trajectory in 30 seconds when it took humans 20 hours. Even though ENIC technology was ahead-of-its-time, it was 24 years later, in 1969, when the United States military-develop Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) first linked four computers together to transfer information, even if nuclear war had decimated the world. On October 29, 1969, Internet history was made when two computers, one at Stanford University and one at the University of California, Los Angeles, connected for the first time via satellite communication. Stanford and UCLA were the first higher-education institutions to host what would one day become the Internet and forever acknowledged as the first universities on the Net.
Known as "Fathers of the Internet," Computer Scientist Vinton Cerf and Electrical Engineer Robert Kahn together designed the architecture of the Internet and the procedures known as the "Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol" (TCP/IP). The vision to provide "...an open, accessible collection of networks operated cooperatively, that allow supercomputers and desktop PCs to share the Internet" belongs to visionary Robert Khan.
To think of our modern world without the technological advancement of the Internet is to think of our world without other directly related technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), satellites, and mobile communication devices, to name a few. Imagine having to go to a physical uplink node! Think of the environmental implications in a world without the Internet and the potential environmental atrocities of forestry devastation to fulfill the world's paper supply. Over the past 50-75 years, there have been many substantial technological advancements, but it is the creation of the Internet that stands above as one of the most significant.
Sources:
https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/birth-of-the-computer/4/78
https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2013/11/history-internet-and-colleges-built-it
https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet
https://www.invent.org/inductees/vinton-g-cerf
https://www.invent.org/inductees/robert-e-kahn
https://www.zdnet.com/article/before-the-web-the-internet-in-1991/
No comments:
Post a Comment