البـــــوابـــة
History of the Internet. We all need it. We all want it. But how did it happen in the first place? Gregory Gromov provides a ... comprehensive ... history of the Worldwide Web before it was the Net we all know and love. By Matthew Holt.
NetworkWorld. June, 1997
____
For a history of the Internet readers should consult Gregory Gromov's The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History. Humanities Computing Unit of Oxford University,
Oxford University, UK
___
The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History. By Gregory R. Gromov. A critically acclaimed site for a comprehensive history of the Internet.
The University of Texas, System Digital Library.
____
Gregory Gromov provides an impressionistic overview in "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History," ... with a particular concentration on the development of hypertext and the Web.
Current literature of the online community by Eron Main, Faculty of Information Studies,
University of Toronto, Canada
____
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov ... can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.
by Kelly Ward, Public Health Library,
University of California, Berkeley
____
Gregory R. Gromov’s The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History is probably the history that most students will enjoy as it is sprinkled liberally with files that illustrate his points.
Commencing with Internet pre-history work your way through 9 sections to read about the web, browser wars, and Xanadu to name a few topics. It is a long essay but extremely interesting.
The Australian National University. Faculty of Art, Canberra
____
... This is a hypertext ... It is written as a kind of mosaic rather than as a straight narrative, including email questions and answers, fragments of interviews, and the like. It focuses primarily on the Web and hypertext over the Internet.
by M. C. Morgan College of Arts and Letters,
Bemidji State University, MN, USA
____
This is an entertaining (if potentially confusing) account of Net history, part of a large on-line hyperbook ... this site will provide some fascinating insights and connections between events and people.
Open Learning Agency : learning resources to support the K-12 education system in British Columbia, Canada
___
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet 's History by Gregory R. Gromov... is an excellent history of the internet and a good example of a "web document." ... You also should experience what "hypertext" is and why this experience is more like exploring than reading...
by Robert Melczarek Introduction for EDU 606 School of Education
Troy State University, Dothan. USA
___
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History - Gregory Gromov's comprehensive and fascinating overview of the philosophy and history of the Internet.
Cource STS 3700B 6.0: “History of Computing and Information Technolog” by Luigi M Bianchi. School of Analitical Studies & Information Technology. Science and Technology Studies
York University, Canada
____
Finally, an entertaining and eye-catching approach to Internet history is Gregory R. Gromov's History of Internet and WWW: The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. This site is worth visiting, as much for its unorthodox approach using dazzling visuals and hypertext style as its content. By Deborah Husted Koshinsky and Rick McRae, University Libraries
State University of New York at Buffalo
____
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov ... possibly not the first place in the pool where a non-swimmer should take the plunge, this colorful and quirky site can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.
"Nettalk : A Brief History of the 'Net" by Kelly Ward
The Bulletin. Special Libraries Association, San Francisco Bay region. The School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) -- a graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.
___
This is one of the Great Classic Websites. It's a history of the Internet and what led up to it, told in hypertext, both eloquently and chaotically, as strange in its own way as the Mel Brooks movie, History of the World, Part One. But it's one [REDACTED} of a lot more accurate than the Brooks movie. All Internet users, even those of you who just signed up for Web-TV or AOL last week and are still fumbling around, should check out this site.
When you jump into this online story, make sure you have a couple of hours free. It takes that long to read. Imagine a collaborative writing project that tells you more than you ever wanted to know (and more than probably thought there was to tell) about the Internet, starting with the laying of the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1858 (which was NOT a success, BTW).
You'll learn why the WWW Consortium [W3C] is based at a physics lab in Switzerland called CERN, instead of at a computer research center where you'd logically expect it to be, and why CERN doesn't even stand for the lab's real name -- in either English or French, along with lots of other neat factoids that'll come in handy if you ever find yourself playing Trivial Pursuit: The Internet Edition.
by Robin Miller
Best High-Tech Sights on the Net
__
For anyone who has ever wondered how and why the Internet was created comes this extensive essay, "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History." With this document, users can follow the development of the Net from its early stages as a military communication system to the multimedia extravaganza we know today.
Cource Education 2751: "Power and Communication Technology" by Bridget A. Ricketts
Prince of Wales Collegiate, Newfoundland Canada
__
Gregory R. Gromov's version is a fun to read and thoughtful look into the history of the Internet and the WWW.
USM - Professional Development Center
The Maine Science and Technology Foundation. USA
___
an excellent 9-part review of the Internet's history and its relationship with the information revolution . Very informative and quite amusing at times too!
A comprehensive and fascinating overview of the philosophy and history of the Internet. Many related links and a section on pertinent statistics. Magellan Internet Guide
Tim,Robert and Ted
Net History with a Human Face
Chapter 1.
Road 1: USA toEurope
Information Age Milestones
1866:" In the beginning was the Cable..."
The Atlantic cable of 1858 was established to carry instantaneous communications across the ocean for the first time. Although the laying of this first cable was seen as a landmark event in society, it was a technical failure. It only remained in service a few days.
Subsequent cables laid in 1866 were completely successful and compare to events like the moon landing of a century later... the cable ... remained in use for almost 100 years.
Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
A brief look from 1997:
Annual percentage growth rate of data traffic on undersea telephone cables: 90
Number of miles of undersea telephone cables: 186,000 Source: WinTreese
1957: Sputnik has launched ARPA
comet0317-5.GIF (2915 bytes)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik.
1957 - October 4th - the USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite.
1958 - February 7th - In response to the launch of Sputnik, the US Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
The organization united some of America's most brilliant people, who developed the United States' first successful satellite in 18 months. Several years later ARPA began to focus on computer networking and communications technology.
In 1962, Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA's research in improving the military's use of computer technology. Licklider was a visionary who sought to make the government's use of computers more interactive. To quickly expand technology, Licklider saw the need to move ARPA's contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations for what would become the ARPANET.
The Atlantic cable of 1858 and Sputnik of 1957 were two basic milestone of the Internet prehistory. You might want also to take a look on the Telecommunications and Computers preHistory
The Internet as a tool to create "critical mass" of intellectual resources
To appreciate the import ante the new computer-aided communication can have, one must consider the dynamics of "critical mass," as it applies to cooperation in creative endeavor. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its solution. Those people must be brought into close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with one another. But bring these people together physically in one place to form a team, and you have trouble, for the most creative people are often not the best team players, and there are not enough top positions in a single organization to keep them all happy. Let them go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, and devotes more time to the role of emperor than to the role of problem solver. The principals still get together at meetings. They still visit one another. But the time scale of their communication stretches out, and the correlations among mental models degenerate between meetings so that it may take a year to do a week’s communicating. There has to be some way of facilitating communicantion among people wit bout bringing them together in one place.
The Computer as a Communication Device by J.C.R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor, Science and Technology, April 1968. Online republish by Systems Research Center of DEC, p.29
The first visible results of Licklider's approach comes shortly
1969: The first LOGs: UCLA -- Stanford
According toVinton Cerf:
...the UCLA people proposed to DARPA to organize and run a Network Measurement Center for the ARPANET project...
Around Labor Day in 1969, BBN delivered an Interface Message Processor (IMP) to UCLA that was based on a Honeywell DDP 516, and when they turned it on, it just started running. It was hooked by 50 Kbps circuits to two other sites (SRI and UCSB) in the four-node network: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute (SRI), UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
fournode-2.gif (17482 bytes)
The plan was unprecedented: Kleinrock, a pioneering computer science professor at UCLA, and his small group of graduate students hoped to log onto the Stanford computer and try to send it some data.They would start by typing "login," and seeing if the letters appeared on the far-off monitor.
"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI...," Kleinrock ... said in an interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,
"Do you see the L?"
"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
"We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
"Yes, we see the O."
"Then we typed the G, and the system crashed"...
Yet a revolution had begun"...
1972: First public demonstration of ARPANET
In late 1971, Larry Roberts at DARPA decided that people needed serious motivation to get things going. In October 1972 there was to be an International Conference on Computer Communications, so Larry asked Bob Kahn at BBN to organize a public demonstration of the ARPANET.
It took Bob about a year to get everybody far enough along to demonstrate a bunch of applications on the ARPANET. The idea was that we would install a packet switch and a Terminal Interface Processor or TIP in the basement of the Washington Hilton Hotel, and actually let the public come in and use the ARPANET, running applications all over the U.S ....
The demo was a roaring success, much to the surprise of the people at AT&T who were skeptical about whether it would work.
Source: Vinton Cerf
About one - two years after the first online demo of how "actually let the public come in and use the ARPANET, running applications all over the U.S ...." (Vinton Cerf) the NET became really busy especially "every Friday night" (Bob Bell)
Around about 1973 - 1975 I maintained PDP 10 hardware at SRI.
I remember hearing that there was an ARPANET "conference" on the Star Trek game every Friday night. Star Trek was a text based game where you used photon torpedos and phasers to blast Klingons.
I used to have a pretty cool logical map of the ARPANET at the time but my ex-wife got it. (She got everything but the debts.)
Bob Bell
DEC Field Service
It seems we found "a pretty cool logical map of the ARPANET" which Bob has kindly reminded us about . Thanks, Bob!
net71-2.gif (28175 bytes)
Logical map of the ARPANET, April 1971
* 1958 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created by Department of Defense (DoD).
* 1961 Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) assigns a Command and Control Project to ARPA.
* 1962 Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) formed to coordinate ARPA's command and control research.
* 1972 ARPA renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
* 1986 The technical scope of IPTO expands and it becomes the Information Science and Technology Office (ISTO).
* 1991 ISTO splits into the Computing Systems Technology Office (CSTO) and the Software and Intelligent Systems Office
By Charles Babbage Institute
Center For the History of Information Processing
University of Minnesota
The Internet has changed the way we currently communicate...
But could the Internet have performed the function it was originally designed for?
CNN: Would the internet survive nuclear war?
The Internet Post-Apocalypse There's a common myth that the Internet could survive a nuclear attack. If the Internet, or pieces of it, did withstand such a war, how would it be used post-apocalypse? Would the Internet itself be used to wage war? Would it become a sole source of information for the surviving masses?
Or would it be too cluttered with dead sites and falsehoods to be worth anything?
.
B. Porter - 05:09pm Oct 3, 1998 ET ... It is very doubtful the Internet would survive ANY sort of large-scale nuclear attack.... A few years ago a single "surge" in a major West Coast power line, caused a large portion of the West Coast to be blacked out for several hours. (If you live on the West Coast you probably remember this.) The effect of so many power-stations going out at once would be catastrophic to the power grid for ALL of North America, and Western Europe...
Finally, however, the biggest problem, as was previously mentioned, is the EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse - ed.) pulse. The first missiles to fly ... would then explode, at high-altitude.... These explosions would result in an unprecedented EMP pulse that would cripple virtually 90% (Military estimates put this at closer to 95% of more) of all electronics in the U.S... Almost anything with a microchip in it would be gone.... Imagine the effect of this...
D. Callahan - 09:42am Oct 6, 1998 ET
... This question is somewhat stupid: In keeping with the Cold War theme, I'll end with a quote from Kruscheve (spelling): "In a nuclear war-the living will envy the dead..."
By CNN Interactive
.
The point that I do want to dust off and raise again is that ARPA wouldn't have happened, if what used to be the Soviet Union hadn't shaken complacent U.S. awake with a tin can in the sky, Sputnik.
Wars do wonders for the advancement of technology, and the Cold one was certainly no exception. The way to get a technology advanced is to gather a lot of really smart people under one roof and get them to concentrate on a single project. Of course, that takes some organization and money. Where does that come from? But that's another can of worms - to be opened with relish at a later date. In this case, it was the only body that had a stake in making sure the Net worked - the government.
What with the Cold War in full swing and all, the military, specifically its think tank the Rand Corporation, was concerned that if the war ever got hot and large chunks of the country were vaporized, those phone lines (not to mention considerable segments of the population) would be radioactive dust. And the top brass wouldn't be able to get in touch and carry on. Thus the packets bouncing from node to node, each of those nodes able to send, receive and pass on data with the same authority as any other. It was anarchy that worked, and on a technical level, it still does, obviously.
REWIRED by David Hudson,
JOURNAL OF A STRAINED NET,
August 9th, 1996
The Roads That Were Built By Ike
. ike2.gif (8055 bytes)
.
"I like Ike" was an irressistible slogan in 1952. About half century later, there are reasons "to like Ike" even more ...
Many people don't realize that there is more than a metaphor which connects the
"Information Superhighway"
with the
Interstate Highway System
In 1957, while responding to the threat of the Soviets in general and the success of Sputnik in particular, President Dwight Eisenhower created both the Interstate Highway System and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.
.by Steve Driscoll, Online Computer Library Center Inc.
Information Superhighway:
what exactly does it mean?
In Europe:
"A term often used by the media to describe the Internet."
by The Internet Dictionary , Bradford, England
In USA
there are lots of different meanings:
Information Superhighway/Infobahn: The terms were coined to describe a possible upgrade to the existing Internet through the use of fiber optic and/or coaxial cable to allow for high speed data transmission. This highway does not exist - the Internet of today is not an information superhighway.
by Internet Glossary , SquareOne Technology
.
information superhighway or I-way - this is a buzzword from a speech by Vice President Al Gore that refers to the Clinton/Gore administration's plan to deregulate communication services and widen the scope of the Internet by opening carriers, such as television cable, to data communication. The term is widely used to mean the Internet, also referred to as the infobahn (I-bahn).
by Online Dictionary , NetLingo
Confusing, isn't it?
Fortunately Nice Lady kindly agreed to clarify the root source:
Tipper and Al Gore Tipper Gore:"When my husband Vice President Gore served in the House of Representatives, he coined the phrase "information superhighway" to describe how this exciting new medium would one day transport us all. Since then, we have seen the Internet and World Wide Web revolutionize the way people interact, learn, and communicate."
Photo of Tipper and Al Gore wedding: 20-th year BW (Before Web)
Gore has become the point man in the Clinton administration's effort to build a national information highway much as his father, former Senator Albert Gore, was a principal architect of the interstate highway system a generation or more earlier.
Principal Figures in the Development of the Internet ...
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
.
24 Jun 1986: Albert Gore (D-TN) introduce S 2594
Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986
21 March 1994: Gore's Buenos Aires Speech
International Telecommunications Union:
"By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time ... The round globe is a vast ... brain, instinct with intelligence!"
This was not the observation of a physicist--or a neurologist. Instead, these visionary words were written in 1851 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of my country's greatest writers, who was inspired by the development of the telegraph. Much as Jules Verne foresaw submarines and moon landings, Hawthorne foresaw what we are now poised to bring into being...
... I opened by quoting Nathaniel Hawthorne, inspired by Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph. Morse was also a famous portrait artist in the U.S.--his portrait of President James Monroe hangs today in the White House. While Morse was working on a portrait of General Lafayette in Washington, his wife, who lived about 500 kilometers away, grew ill and died. But it took seven days for the news to reach him.
In his grief and remorse, he began to wonder if it were possible to erase barriers of time and space, so that no one would be unable to reach a loved one in time of need. Pursuing this thought, he came to discover how to use electricity to convey messages, and so he invented the telegraph and, indirectly, the ITU."
NetworkWorld. June, 1997
____
For a history of the Internet readers should consult Gregory Gromov's The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History. Humanities Computing Unit of Oxford University,
Oxford University, UK
___
The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History. By Gregory R. Gromov. A critically acclaimed site for a comprehensive history of the Internet.
The University of Texas, System Digital Library.
____
Gregory Gromov provides an impressionistic overview in "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History," ... with a particular concentration on the development of hypertext and the Web.
Current literature of the online community by Eron Main, Faculty of Information Studies,
University of Toronto, Canada
____
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov ... can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.
by Kelly Ward, Public Health Library,
University of California, Berkeley
____
Gregory R. Gromov’s The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History is probably the history that most students will enjoy as it is sprinkled liberally with files that illustrate his points.
Commencing with Internet pre-history work your way through 9 sections to read about the web, browser wars, and Xanadu to name a few topics. It is a long essay but extremely interesting.
The Australian National University. Faculty of Art, Canberra
____
... This is a hypertext ... It is written as a kind of mosaic rather than as a straight narrative, including email questions and answers, fragments of interviews, and the like. It focuses primarily on the Web and hypertext over the Internet.
by M. C. Morgan College of Arts and Letters,
Bemidji State University, MN, USA
____
This is an entertaining (if potentially confusing) account of Net history, part of a large on-line hyperbook ... this site will provide some fascinating insights and connections between events and people.
Open Learning Agency : learning resources to support the K-12 education system in British Columbia, Canada
___
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet 's History by Gregory R. Gromov... is an excellent history of the internet and a good example of a "web document." ... You also should experience what "hypertext" is and why this experience is more like exploring than reading...
by Robert Melczarek Introduction for EDU 606 School of Education
Troy State University, Dothan. USA
___
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History - Gregory Gromov's comprehensive and fascinating overview of the philosophy and history of the Internet.
Cource STS 3700B 6.0: “History of Computing and Information Technolog” by Luigi M Bianchi. School of Analitical Studies & Information Technology. Science and Technology Studies
York University, Canada
____
Finally, an entertaining and eye-catching approach to Internet history is Gregory R. Gromov's History of Internet and WWW: The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. This site is worth visiting, as much for its unorthodox approach using dazzling visuals and hypertext style as its content. By Deborah Husted Koshinsky and Rick McRae, University Libraries
State University of New York at Buffalo
____
The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov ... possibly not the first place in the pool where a non-swimmer should take the plunge, this colorful and quirky site can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.
"Nettalk : A Brief History of the 'Net" by Kelly Ward
The Bulletin. Special Libraries Association, San Francisco Bay region. The School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) -- a graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.
___
This is one of the Great Classic Websites. It's a history of the Internet and what led up to it, told in hypertext, both eloquently and chaotically, as strange in its own way as the Mel Brooks movie, History of the World, Part One. But it's one [REDACTED} of a lot more accurate than the Brooks movie. All Internet users, even those of you who just signed up for Web-TV or AOL last week and are still fumbling around, should check out this site.
When you jump into this online story, make sure you have a couple of hours free. It takes that long to read. Imagine a collaborative writing project that tells you more than you ever wanted to know (and more than probably thought there was to tell) about the Internet, starting with the laying of the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1858 (which was NOT a success, BTW).
You'll learn why the WWW Consortium [W3C] is based at a physics lab in Switzerland called CERN, instead of at a computer research center where you'd logically expect it to be, and why CERN doesn't even stand for the lab's real name -- in either English or French, along with lots of other neat factoids that'll come in handy if you ever find yourself playing Trivial Pursuit: The Internet Edition.
by Robin Miller
Best High-Tech Sights on the Net
__
For anyone who has ever wondered how and why the Internet was created comes this extensive essay, "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History." With this document, users can follow the development of the Net from its early stages as a military communication system to the multimedia extravaganza we know today.
Cource Education 2751: "Power and Communication Technology" by Bridget A. Ricketts
Prince of Wales Collegiate, Newfoundland Canada
__
Gregory R. Gromov's version is a fun to read and thoughtful look into the history of the Internet and the WWW.
USM - Professional Development Center
The Maine Science and Technology Foundation. USA
___
an excellent 9-part review of the Internet's history and its relationship with the information revolution . Very informative and quite amusing at times too!
A comprehensive and fascinating overview of the philosophy and history of the Internet. Many related links and a section on pertinent statistics. Magellan Internet Guide
Tim,Robert and Ted
Net History with a Human Face
Chapter 1.
Road 1: USA toEurope
Information Age Milestones
1866:" In the beginning was the Cable..."
The Atlantic cable of 1858 was established to carry instantaneous communications across the ocean for the first time. Although the laying of this first cable was seen as a landmark event in society, it was a technical failure. It only remained in service a few days.
Subsequent cables laid in 1866 were completely successful and compare to events like the moon landing of a century later... the cable ... remained in use for almost 100 years.
Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
A brief look from 1997:
Annual percentage growth rate of data traffic on undersea telephone cables: 90
Number of miles of undersea telephone cables: 186,000 Source: WinTreese
1957: Sputnik has launched ARPA
comet0317-5.GIF (2915 bytes)
President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw the need for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik.
1957 - October 4th - the USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite.
1958 - February 7th - In response to the launch of Sputnik, the US Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
The organization united some of America's most brilliant people, who developed the United States' first successful satellite in 18 months. Several years later ARPA began to focus on computer networking and communications technology.
In 1962, Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen to head ARPA's research in improving the military's use of computer technology. Licklider was a visionary who sought to make the government's use of computers more interactive. To quickly expand technology, Licklider saw the need to move ARPA's contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations for what would become the ARPANET.
The Atlantic cable of 1858 and Sputnik of 1957 were two basic milestone of the Internet prehistory. You might want also to take a look on the Telecommunications and Computers preHistory
The Internet as a tool to create "critical mass" of intellectual resources
To appreciate the import ante the new computer-aided communication can have, one must consider the dynamics of "critical mass," as it applies to cooperation in creative endeavor. Take any problem worthy of the name, and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its solution. Those people must be brought into close intellectual partnership so that their ideas can come into contact with one another. But bring these people together physically in one place to form a team, and you have trouble, for the most creative people are often not the best team players, and there are not enough top positions in a single organization to keep them all happy. Let them go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large or small, and devotes more time to the role of emperor than to the role of problem solver. The principals still get together at meetings. They still visit one another. But the time scale of their communication stretches out, and the correlations among mental models degenerate between meetings so that it may take a year to do a week’s communicating. There has to be some way of facilitating communicantion among people wit bout bringing them together in one place.
The Computer as a Communication Device by J.C.R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor, Science and Technology, April 1968. Online republish by Systems Research Center of DEC, p.29
The first visible results of Licklider's approach comes shortly
1969: The first LOGs: UCLA -- Stanford
According toVinton Cerf:
...the UCLA people proposed to DARPA to organize and run a Network Measurement Center for the ARPANET project...
Around Labor Day in 1969, BBN delivered an Interface Message Processor (IMP) to UCLA that was based on a Honeywell DDP 516, and when they turned it on, it just started running. It was hooked by 50 Kbps circuits to two other sites (SRI and UCSB) in the four-node network: UCLA, Stanford Research Institute (SRI), UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
fournode-2.gif (17482 bytes)
The plan was unprecedented: Kleinrock, a pioneering computer science professor at UCLA, and his small group of graduate students hoped to log onto the Stanford computer and try to send it some data.They would start by typing "login," and seeing if the letters appeared on the far-off monitor.
"We set up a telephone connection between us and the guys at SRI...," Kleinrock ... said in an interview: "We typed the L and we asked on the phone,
"Do you see the L?"
"Yes, we see the L," came the response.
"We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O."
"Yes, we see the O."
"Then we typed the G, and the system crashed"...
Yet a revolution had begun"...
1972: First public demonstration of ARPANET
In late 1971, Larry Roberts at DARPA decided that people needed serious motivation to get things going. In October 1972 there was to be an International Conference on Computer Communications, so Larry asked Bob Kahn at BBN to organize a public demonstration of the ARPANET.
It took Bob about a year to get everybody far enough along to demonstrate a bunch of applications on the ARPANET. The idea was that we would install a packet switch and a Terminal Interface Processor or TIP in the basement of the Washington Hilton Hotel, and actually let the public come in and use the ARPANET, running applications all over the U.S ....
The demo was a roaring success, much to the surprise of the people at AT&T who were skeptical about whether it would work.
Source: Vinton Cerf
About one - two years after the first online demo of how "actually let the public come in and use the ARPANET, running applications all over the U.S ...." (Vinton Cerf) the NET became really busy especially "every Friday night" (Bob Bell)
Around about 1973 - 1975 I maintained PDP 10 hardware at SRI.
I remember hearing that there was an ARPANET "conference" on the Star Trek game every Friday night. Star Trek was a text based game where you used photon torpedos and phasers to blast Klingons.
I used to have a pretty cool logical map of the ARPANET at the time but my ex-wife got it. (She got everything but the debts.)
Bob Bell
DEC Field Service
It seems we found "a pretty cool logical map of the ARPANET" which Bob has kindly reminded us about . Thanks, Bob!
net71-2.gif (28175 bytes)
Logical map of the ARPANET, April 1971
* 1958 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created by Department of Defense (DoD).
* 1961 Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) assigns a Command and Control Project to ARPA.
* 1962 Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) formed to coordinate ARPA's command and control research.
* 1972 ARPA renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
* 1986 The technical scope of IPTO expands and it becomes the Information Science and Technology Office (ISTO).
* 1991 ISTO splits into the Computing Systems Technology Office (CSTO) and the Software and Intelligent Systems Office
By Charles Babbage Institute
Center For the History of Information Processing
University of Minnesota
The Internet has changed the way we currently communicate...
But could the Internet have performed the function it was originally designed for?
CNN: Would the internet survive nuclear war?
The Internet Post-Apocalypse There's a common myth that the Internet could survive a nuclear attack. If the Internet, or pieces of it, did withstand such a war, how would it be used post-apocalypse? Would the Internet itself be used to wage war? Would it become a sole source of information for the surviving masses?
Or would it be too cluttered with dead sites and falsehoods to be worth anything?
.
B. Porter - 05:09pm Oct 3, 1998 ET ... It is very doubtful the Internet would survive ANY sort of large-scale nuclear attack.... A few years ago a single "surge" in a major West Coast power line, caused a large portion of the West Coast to be blacked out for several hours. (If you live on the West Coast you probably remember this.) The effect of so many power-stations going out at once would be catastrophic to the power grid for ALL of North America, and Western Europe...
Finally, however, the biggest problem, as was previously mentioned, is the EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse - ed.) pulse. The first missiles to fly ... would then explode, at high-altitude.... These explosions would result in an unprecedented EMP pulse that would cripple virtually 90% (Military estimates put this at closer to 95% of more) of all electronics in the U.S... Almost anything with a microchip in it would be gone.... Imagine the effect of this...
D. Callahan - 09:42am Oct 6, 1998 ET
... This question is somewhat stupid: In keeping with the Cold War theme, I'll end with a quote from Kruscheve (spelling): "In a nuclear war-the living will envy the dead..."
By CNN Interactive
.
The point that I do want to dust off and raise again is that ARPA wouldn't have happened, if what used to be the Soviet Union hadn't shaken complacent U.S. awake with a tin can in the sky, Sputnik.
Wars do wonders for the advancement of technology, and the Cold one was certainly no exception. The way to get a technology advanced is to gather a lot of really smart people under one roof and get them to concentrate on a single project. Of course, that takes some organization and money. Where does that come from? But that's another can of worms - to be opened with relish at a later date. In this case, it was the only body that had a stake in making sure the Net worked - the government.
What with the Cold War in full swing and all, the military, specifically its think tank the Rand Corporation, was concerned that if the war ever got hot and large chunks of the country were vaporized, those phone lines (not to mention considerable segments of the population) would be radioactive dust. And the top brass wouldn't be able to get in touch and carry on. Thus the packets bouncing from node to node, each of those nodes able to send, receive and pass on data with the same authority as any other. It was anarchy that worked, and on a technical level, it still does, obviously.
REWIRED by David Hudson,
JOURNAL OF A STRAINED NET,
August 9th, 1996
The Roads That Were Built By Ike
. ike2.gif (8055 bytes)
.
"I like Ike" was an irressistible slogan in 1952. About half century later, there are reasons "to like Ike" even more ...
Many people don't realize that there is more than a metaphor which connects the
"Information Superhighway"
with the
Interstate Highway System
In 1957, while responding to the threat of the Soviets in general and the success of Sputnik in particular, President Dwight Eisenhower created both the Interstate Highway System and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.
.by Steve Driscoll, Online Computer Library Center Inc.
Information Superhighway:
what exactly does it mean?
In Europe:
"A term often used by the media to describe the Internet."
by The Internet Dictionary , Bradford, England
In USA
there are lots of different meanings:
Information Superhighway/Infobahn: The terms were coined to describe a possible upgrade to the existing Internet through the use of fiber optic and/or coaxial cable to allow for high speed data transmission. This highway does not exist - the Internet of today is not an information superhighway.
by Internet Glossary , SquareOne Technology
.
information superhighway or I-way - this is a buzzword from a speech by Vice President Al Gore that refers to the Clinton/Gore administration's plan to deregulate communication services and widen the scope of the Internet by opening carriers, such as television cable, to data communication. The term is widely used to mean the Internet, also referred to as the infobahn (I-bahn).
by Online Dictionary , NetLingo
Confusing, isn't it?
Fortunately Nice Lady kindly agreed to clarify the root source:
Tipper and Al Gore Tipper Gore:"When my husband Vice President Gore served in the House of Representatives, he coined the phrase "information superhighway" to describe how this exciting new medium would one day transport us all. Since then, we have seen the Internet and World Wide Web revolutionize the way people interact, learn, and communicate."
Photo of Tipper and Al Gore wedding: 20-th year BW (Before Web)
Gore has become the point man in the Clinton administration's effort to build a national information highway much as his father, former Senator Albert Gore, was a principal architect of the interstate highway system a generation or more earlier.
Principal Figures in the Development of the Internet ...
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
.
24 Jun 1986: Albert Gore (D-TN) introduce S 2594
Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1986
21 March 1994: Gore's Buenos Aires Speech
International Telecommunications Union:
"By means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time ... The round globe is a vast ... brain, instinct with intelligence!"
This was not the observation of a physicist--or a neurologist. Instead, these visionary words were written in 1851 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of my country's greatest writers, who was inspired by the development of the telegraph. Much as Jules Verne foresaw submarines and moon landings, Hawthorne foresaw what we are now poised to bring into being...
... I opened by quoting Nathaniel Hawthorne, inspired by Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph. Morse was also a famous portrait artist in the U.S.--his portrait of President James Monroe hangs today in the White House. While Morse was working on a portrait of General Lafayette in Washington, his wife, who lived about 500 kilometers away, grew ill and died. But it took seven days for the news to reach him.
In his grief and remorse, he began to wonder if it were possible to erase barriers of time and space, so that no one would be unable to reach a loved one in time of need. Pursuing this thought, he came to discover how to use electricity to convey messages, and so he invented the telegraph and, indirectly, the ITU."
