35 years down the Net’s memory lane

Today it’s all too easy to take the Net for granted. But as JAMES A FUSSELL writes, the 35-year-old innovation has come a long way from the clunky technology that started it all.

YOU'RE not going to www.believethis, but the Internet has turned 35.

Internet you use today, but rather the beginnings of the fledgling computer network that made it all possible - the ARPANET.

Yes, in 1969, thanks to Sputnik, the Cold War and even Superman comic books, the world's first computer network took a baby step toward changing the world. Today it's all too easy to take the Net for granted. A few keystrokes here, the push of a button there and you have the globe at your fingertips.

But how did we get here? And how does it all work?

We'll do our best to decode it for you. 

What is the Internet ?

It’s short for “Interconnected Network of Networks.” So it’s simply one enormous, global computer network made up of countless smaller networks digitally linked together.

Who invented it ?

No one person. Numerous researchers in government and academia developed and refined the technology.

How did it start ?

The groundwork was laid during the Cold War.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957 the United States established the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.  The agency united some of the country’s brightest minds to develop the country’s first successful satellite.

        Then in the early 1960s, seeking a way to ensure stable communications in an unstable age, the reser4chers turned their attention to computer networking that could transfer data even if power lines were don or equipment disable.

Where was the first real computer network activated ?

At a computer lab at the University of California at Los Angeles.

What happened ?

Computer science professor Len Kleinrock and a small group of graduate students conducted a test of a four-node network. Using 900-pound computers encased in gray steel and new technology devised by ARPA, they attempted to link University of California (UCLA) with computers at the University of Utah, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the Stanford Research Institute. The first attempt involved typing the word “login” to see if the letters would appear on distant monitors.

        Kleinrock recounted the history-making moment in various interviews, including one with The Sacramento Bee: “We set up a telephone connected between us and the guys at (Stanford).”.

They began to type the word “login” a letter at a time and then asked over the telephone:

        “Do you see the L?”

        “Yes, we see the L,” came the response.

        “Do you see the “O?”

        “Yes, we see the “O.”

        “Then,” Kleinrock said, “We typed the “G” and the system crashed.

        The ARPANET was born.

        Subsequent tests were more successful. The network expanded from there.

How does the Internet work ?

The details too complex to be fully explained here.  Suffice  it to say that when you connect to the Internet and visit websites, you are digitally requesting information from another computer.

        Date requests and transfers from one machine to another are accomplished through the use of computer protocols, which are simply sets of instructions that tell a computer what to do.  All computers on the Internet use a standardized set of instructions known as TCP/IP.

        Other standardized instructions for your computer help it perform many tasks, including the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, or http, used on the World Wide Web to send information. Even though you may not understand protocols, protocols are the way computers understand each other.

Isn’t the World Wide Web the same as the Internet ?

No. The Internet is a collection of computers hooked up on a network. The World Wide Web is a subset of the Internet. Specially, the Web’s computers run special software to send information over the Net on demand.

        The language these “Web servers” speak is http, invented in 1989 by European physics researcher Tim Berners – Lee.

        “So the World Wide Web did not  make the Internet, it made the Internet more useful and interesting,” said Susan Gauch, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Kansas.

What is the most used part of the Internet, and who invented it ?

E-mail.  A man named Ray Tomlinson developed the first e-mail application for the ARPANET in 1971.

When was the first emoticon (those typed punctuations to indicate tone or emotion) invented ?

The first one, invented in 1979, looked like this: -)

        It was known as “Tongue-in-Cheek.” The more popular smiley face - :-) first showed up in e-mail in 1982.

What is a browser ?

Internet Explorer or Netscape, for example.  A browser is software that can send an information request on the World Wide Web and then display a web page containing that information.

What happens when you enter a website address on your computer and push the Entry key ?

A piece of software essentially “wakes up” and electronically sends your message across the Internet to the location you have typed in. That computer, known as a Web server, finds the information you digitally requested and sends it back.

Did (former US vice president) Al Gore really say he invented the Internet ?

No, but that’s the impression he left with many people. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during the 2000 presidential race Gore Said:

        “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”/

        Gore was not saying he invented anything.  His point was that, as a congressman, he took the lead in supporting the research that helped create the refine what became the Internet.

        Vinton Cerf, one of Kleinrock’s graduate students at UCLA,  who has been called the Father of the Internet (thanks to his invention of the TCP Internet protocol), said at the time:

        “The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator.”

Is there anything faster than the current Internet most people know ?

Yes. It’s called Internet 2, and it features speeds 100  times faster than most home broadband connections.  Internet 2 is now limited to select universities, corporations and institutions. – The Kansas City Star/KRT.

Five surprising the influences

1.         Superman: At age 6, computer visionary Len Kleinrock built a crystal radio from plans in a Superman comic book. Wow! As he said later: “An engineer was born.”

2.         Sputnic:  The Soviet space satellite threw American into technological overdrive.

3.         The US Defence Department: It commissioned the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which developed the first network – ARPANET.

4.         Star Trek: The first “Net-heads” kept e-mailing one another about their sci-fi loves – Bradbury, Asimov and all things Trek. So engineers kept improving the young networks to handle it all.

5.         US Congress: Hey, they actually did something with US taxpayers’ money.  In 1991 Vice President Al Gore’s High Performance Computing Act passed, setting goals for growth and giving grants to achieve them.