All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Economics: It's not just whats' in your wallet

Internet and the Economy

Internet Timeline

pre 1940s 1940s    1950s    1960s    1970s    1980s    1990s    2000s

pre 1940s

In 1844 Samuel Morse (debatable) invented a method of communication using electronic impulses, a key, and a special code that attributed pulses to letters of the alphabet. 

1820 and 1840, Charles Babbage experimented with the idea of a “Difference Engine.” The machine was to digitalize calculation, though small errors prevented its actual creation. Herman Hollerith assisted in compiling the 1890 US Census with his newly developed digital processing machines. He went on to found the Calculating-Tabulating-Recording (C-T-C) company in 1914, a company renamed IBM (International Business Machines) in 1924. In 1961, IBM instituted a 'Compatible Time Sharing System' into its 7090/94 series. This allowed separate terminals in different offices to access the same hardware. 

1940s

1945 Vennevar Bush publishes paper on memex machine 1967 National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England develops NPL Data Network under D. W. Davies 

1950s

1957 The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. In response, the United States forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military. /

1960s

1968 ARPA awarded the ARPANET contract to BBN. BBN had selected a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.

1968 – Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs)

1969 -The Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) creates an experimental network called ARPANET. This network provides a test-bed for emerging network technologies.  Use of Interface Message Processors (IMP) [Honeywell 516 mini computer with 12K of memory] developed by Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN). The 1st node-to-node message sent between UCLA and SRI - which was also the first Arpanet crash.

1970s

1970 – First cross-country link installed by AT&T between UCLA and BBN at 56kbps. This line is later replaced by another between BBN and RAND. A second line is added between MIT and Utah. 

1970 - ARPANET creates precursor to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

1971 – Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. The original program was derived from two others: an intra-machine email program (SENDMSG) and an experimental file transfer program (CPYNET) (:amk:irhJ

1971 15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames.

1972 – First computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC, as psychotic PARRY (at Stanford) discusses its problems with the Doctor (at BBN).

1972 - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) develops the telnet application for remote login, making it easier to connect to a remote computer.

1972 - Universities are added to the net.  TELNET and File Transfer Protocols (FTP's) are available.

1972 - First email message sent.

1973 – First international connections to the ARPANET: University College of London (England) via NORSAR (Norway)

1973 Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.

1974 First Use of term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission Control Protocol.  TCP starts being used for communicating across a system  of networks.

1975 - The MITS Altair 8800 is hailed as the first "personal" computer. Paul Allen and Bill Gates develop BASIC for the 8800 and Microsoft is born.

1976 - Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom sends out an e-mail.

1979 USENET (the decentralized news group network) was created by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student at University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. It was based on UUCP. The Creation of BITNET, by IBM, "Because its Time Network", introduced the "store and forward" network. It was used for email and listservs.  The first USENET newsgroups are established and people around the world are soon discussing the thousands subjects electronically. CompuServe becomes the first service to offer electronic mail capabilities to personal computer users.

1980s

1980 -The Department of Defense(DOD) adopts TCP/IP Protocol: designed in 1973 by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford who collaborated on the design of an internetwork architecture that would allow packet networks of different kinds to interconnect and machines to communicate across a set of interconnected networks.

1982 - Department of Defense starts to build Defense Data Network based on ARPANET technology.

1982 - The term "Internet" is coined. 

1983 - TCP/IP became the standard for the ARPANET, replacing the older host protocol known as NCP.

1983 Internet Activities Board (IAB) was created in 1983. On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely. The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). This allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers. 

1984 - The Apple Macintosh is introduced with a GUI - graphical user interface. 

1984 -George Orwell's philosophy about universal loss of individual rights doesn't come true

1985 Apple launches ACOT - Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow. Microsoft Windows 1.0 ships in November. America Online is launched under original name, Quantum Computer Services, who's first online service is "Q-Link."

1986 The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a forum for technical coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET, US Defense Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system.

1985-86: The National Science Foundation (NSF) connects the nation's six supercomputing centers together. This network is called the NSFNET, or NSFNET backbone.

1988-Under a cooperative agreement between NSF (National Science Foundation) and Merit, Inc., the NSFNET backbone was put into operation and because of its higher speed, soon replaced the ARPANET as the backbone of choice.

1989 - The backbone network is upgraded to "T1" which means that it is able to transmit data at speeds of 1.5 million bits of data per second, or about 50 pages of text per second.

1990s

1990-Internet use was growing by more than 10 percent a month. This expansion was fueled significantly by the enormous growth on the NSFNET and included a major commercial and international component.

1990 - (EFF) The Electronic Frontier Foundation is founded. They work to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology, to educate the press, policymakers and the public about civil liberties issues releated to technology.  www.eff.org

1991- (CIX) The Commercial Internet Exchange is formed. It agreed to exchange traffic without settlements. The router was installed in Santa Clara and was managed to facilitate traffic moving from one network through another. Oldest ISP organization in the U.S. 

1991 - Commercial restriction on Internet use is lifted. Point-and-click navigation of files on the Internet is born in "gopher." Also, World Wide Web software released by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. High Performance Computing Act, authored by then-Senator Gore, is signed into law. Quantum Computer Services changes name to America Online, Inc.

1992-The Internet Society was formed by the private sector to help promote the evolution of the Internet, including maintenance of the Internet standards process.

1992 - Internet hosts exceeded 1,000,000.. First audio and video broadcasts take place.

1994 - Netscape Communications Corp. is formed. White House goes on-line with "Welcome to the White House." The Improving America's Schools Act of 1994 calls for the creation of a national education technology plan. According to the National Center for Education Statistics 35% percent of public elementary and secondary schools, and 3% of instructional rooms, have access to the Internet. 

1994 - BBN Planet introduces Web Advantage service, which offers a high-speed Internet connection, network security and electronic publishing services.

1995 - The NSFNET backbone is replaced by a new network architecture, called vBNS (very high speed backbone network system) that utilizes Network Service Providers, regional networks and Network Access Points (NAPs).

1998- American business loses an estimated $500 million as workers downloaded the Starr Report on the Internet.

1998 - Internet users judge an Ice-Skating competition on TV, the first time a competition is determined by viewers.

2000s

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