Have you ever thought about the Internet? How big is it? How much information do you have access to at the click of a mouse? Where is all this information coming from? Most people think the Internet is some big computer in some secret cave guarded by the military… but it’s not. Here’s the real story of the history of the Internet.
Learn the The History of the Internet
Ultimate Idea
It’s amazing that the idea of the Internet is really no different than the idea of Morse code on a telegraph… radio, telephones, television… the internet is just the ultimate idea for communication. Can you imagine the time when people were sending smoke signals and reflecting light to communicate to each other over long distances? Back then, if you wanted to IM your BFF, you would have to climb to the top of a hill. I guess that’s why people were in better shape back then.
Radio Ga-Ga
It was 1865 when James Clerk Maxwell came up with a mathematical equation that proved that there were light waves and radio waves that traveled in space. Shortly after James’ discoveries, many inventions used his theories using radio waves to transfer information right through thin air. These same radio waves are exactly the same way the Internet transfers information from one computer to another… all thanks to James!
James Clerk Maxwell
Invention of the Internet
The invention of the Internet began in the 1960s when the USSR (Soviet Russia) launched a satellite called Sputnik. It scared the USA. They were losing the race of technology. So the Americans took a different approach to learning faster. They connected all the major Universities together through computers so they could share their information, experiments, and innovations. By 1990, this same structure of sharing information and communication was launched for everyone in the world who owned a computer… the Internet was born.
Sputnik Space Race
The Internet Language
A common assumption people make is that the Internet is some big computer somewhere. It’s not anything like that at all. The Internet is actually just a language like English or Chinese. If your computer understands this language, your computer can be part of the Internet. The language is called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) and all your computer needs to speak this language with other computers is a modem, which sends out the radio waves to the rest of the world.
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