History of the Internet

On the first day... Al Gore said, "Let there be an Internet" and there was, and it was good.

Shortly after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and showed that they were further advanced in technology, the United States government created an organization within the military called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). It's purpose was to establish U.S. led science and technology applicable to the military. In 1965, ARPA began work on "ARPANET", a way of sharing research information between research centers. In 1969, four universities were connected to ARPANET to become the first hosts. By 1971, 23 universities and government research centers around the country were connected. At this point, the network was "members only". In 1981, IBM released their personal computer - selling 65,000 units in the first four months at a price of $4,500 each. This marked the transition from military use to public use. By 1987, the number of hosts on ARPANET had grown to 10,000. In 1990, falling victim to its own success, ARPANET is decommissioned - leaving behind the vast network of networks left to be maintained by the hosts. By 1991, the network of approximately 300,000 hosts becomes known as the world wide web. By 1993, the internet traffic had an annual growth rate of 341,634%. In 1994, Netscape corporation is created and Pizza Hut accepts orders over the net. By 1996, on its 25th anniversary, the Internet has over 40 million people connected. Then shortly after, software tyrant*, Bill Gates force-feeds Internet Explorer to all the hopeless victims of the Windows/Microsoft monopoly, casting the only shadow on the brilliant history of the Internet.

...And the rest is history.

Ty-rant (ti'rent) n. One who exercises absolute power without legal warrant whether ruling well or badly.

Send me your comments.

(And certainly not with Microsoft Frontpage!)

If I may go off on a rant, please do the free world a favor and don't use Microsoft products where it not already necessary. Support open standards and use something that doesn't fuel the Microsoft Juggernaut war machine. Did you know that public schools teacher Frontpage to 10 year olds? My tax dollars go to Bill Gates. You don't need Frontpage to make beautiful web pages. Most of my pages are just typed in plan text. What's so bad about Frontpage you ask? Well Microsoft is the ultimate software company. They are much smarter than you or me. There is something called Microsoft Frontpage extensions that you web hosting company has to have in order for some Frontpage stuff to work. This allows Microsoft Frontpage to create web pages that may be different from the rest of the computing world, and force people to use a certain internet navigator program to view the web page correctly. Now not only has Microsoft sold you Frontpage, they've sold your school Frontpage, they've sold your web hosting company Frontpage extensions (which is an annual subscription for them) and Microsoft can now make you make not standard web pages, that their web browser Internet Explorer work better with then others because of little ticks that only Microsoft supports. Little ticks that you help support by using Frontpage. Think it's not true? I use the internet regularly for my day job, and there are more and more companies that won't even let you log on to their site if you don't have Internet Explorer. http://www.insideadvance.com is one of them. Here is a multimillion dollar company, owned by a multi-billion dollar company saying, we only work with Microsoft. Imagine if Wal-mart said that you had to drive a Chevrolet to go in to their store,and not just Wal-mart, but 96% of the stores in the world. What if the phone company said you had to use only Panasonic phones, or worse, only phone that the phone company made. How much do you think Chevrolet could charge for their cars, or the phone company for their phones if this was the case? 10% more, 20% more, twice the price of their competitor? This is the real life downfall of Microsoft's near Monopoly power. Look at Microsoft Office. $350 for a word processor and spreadsheet program? Their competitors don't charge half that. Why because people like you and me have given up and said, we won't use open standard files. No way, we will spend money to send as much as you want to ask for your software because we don't remember how we got here. When we could open documents from one program into another. Somehow, it slipped away, and now we have to have Word. Soon, you'll have to have Frontpage, or Microsoft may even start to charge for other programs that work with Explorer to do something that only work with Explorer because we let them steer us in any direct they want.