Internet

Internet

The Internet is a technology and electronic communication system such as the world has never seen before. In fact, some people have said that the Internet is the most important innovation since the development of the printing press.

History of the Internet

The Internet was created as a result of the Cold War. In the mid 1960s it became apparent that there was a need for a bomb-proof electronic communication system. A concept was devised to link computers by cable or wire throughout the country in a distributed system so that if some parts of the country were cut off from other parts, messages could still get through. In the beginning, only the federal government and a few universities were linked because the Internet was basically an emergency military communication system, operated by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). The whole operation was referred to as ARPANET.

ARPA was linked to computers at a group of top research universities receiving ARPA funding. The first four universities connected to ARPANET were the University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford University, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Thus, the Internet was born. Because of a concept developed by Larry Roberts of ARPA and Glen Kleinrock at UCLA, called packet switching, the Internet was able to become a decentralized system, which would prevent large-scale destruction of any centralized system.

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