The 50 most significant moments of Internet history
The early days of the Internet. The waking of the Web. We decided upon these five moments between 1966 and 1990 as being crucial to the future of the Web. 
ARPANET, as it would become, was not in fact a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, but simply a military computer network for sharing data across long distances. It influenced the creation of the Internet, and was initially instigated by a US$1 million funding by then-ARPA director Charlie Herzfeld, to then-IPTO director Bob Taylor, a Texan. 
A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection was a paper published in 1974 by Vinton G Cerf and Robert E Kahn. It detailed what would eventually be called TCP/IP--the packet-switching technology that makes the entire Internet possible. It's what gets your data from A to Z, even if most of the Internet implodes, and is possibly the most significant development in Net history. 
Described as "administrative entities", Internet pioneer Dr Jon Postel introduces the top-level domains .com, .org, .gov, .edu and .mil in one of a series of documents called Request For Comments, which were papers published by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Postel also ran and managed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which was set up to coincide with the introduction of the domains. 
After reading in a 1984 magazine article about an efficient lossless compression algorithm called LMZ, CompuServe developers released the GIF image, not knowing the algorithm had a patent pending. The Graphics Interchange Format became insanely popular for its efficiency, and years later transformed the Web into full colour. In 1986, Unisys successfully patented the LZW algorithm, but did nothing to stop CompuServe. A few years later, the two companies banded together and decreed developers must pay to use the format. Unhappy developers revolted. 
British CERN employee Tim Berners-Lee saw that the European Organisation for Nuclear Research needed a more efficient way for scientists to share information, much like ARPA. And just like that, the World Wide Web began as a rudimentary experiment with hypertext. The final project proposal to CERN in 1990, entitled WorldWideWeb: Proposal for the HyperText Project, was Berners-Lee's way of saying, "Hello. I'd like to invent the Web." Tags: Chapter, information superhighway, Time Magazine, online media, Carnegie-Mellon University |
- Talkback
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haewanko says...
I think "The Love Bug" should get a mention in law and order hehehe..
Oct 09, 2008 19:41
I think "The Love Bug" should get a mention in law and order hehehe..
Oct 09, 2008 19:41
blim888 says...
Hey where is the most epic fails category?
Oct 10, 2008 00:45
Hey where is the most epic fails category?
Oct 10, 2008 00:45
dariusctc says...
Hi,
Sorry for the mixup. The images for the Most Epic failures were wrong but the text is correct. We have amended the article. Thanks for the headsup.
Oct 10, 2008 10:41
Hi,
Sorry for the mixup. The images for the Most Epic failures were wrong but the text is correct. We have amended the article. Thanks for the headsup.
Oct 10, 2008 10:41
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