History of the Internet

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What happened on 4 October 1957?

In the sky we could see the Russian Sputnik, and the signals sent from it could be heard via a receiver. During one night only the Soviets had shattered the flourishing self-assurance and confidence of the American nation. The cold war was intensified.
Hysterical prophecies of a Soviet supremacy and the destruction of democracy were to be heard everywhere.
At the beginning of the 50’s many military experts feared a surprise attack by Soviet bombers, equipped with nuclear weapons, via the north pole route.

How could this happen?

By a wrong decision of the USA in the field of development of guided missiles in 1945.
Dr. V. Bush, research director for military projects in the USA, reported: Very much is spoken about long distance missiles, but according to his opinion one should not invest in research for the time being - a reason for the leadership of the Soviet Union in this field for many years.

What happened in the USA after the Sputnik shock?

On 15 October 1957 an advisor committee was nominated by President Eisenhower, in order to discuss the state of affairs.

The next shock for the Americans appeared on 3 November 1957 with Sputnik 2.

Three days later - on 6 November 1957 - a special scientific advisor was already nominated and publicly announced on 7 November by President Eisenhower: namely James R. Killian.

On 7 January 1958 Eisenhower announced the summoning of a special commission in the congress in order to ensure the technological leadership of the United States by promotion of suitable projects.
This commission was named ARPA - Advanced Research Projects Agency - . It was equipped with 520 million $ and received a budget of 2 billion.

For the most advanced research and development projects within the computer area an independent department of the ARPA had been created in 1962.
This department was called IPTO - Information Processing Techniques Office - and was at the beginning of 1966 under the leadership of Bob Taylor. At that time the chairman of the ARPA was Charles Herzfield.
Bob Taylor suggested a network experiment in order to interconnect computers. The ARPA -direktor agreed immediately upon this, and Bob Taylor received for this project one million $ more for his budget.

The contracting partners of the IPTO especially universities, asked for more and more computer resources. The number of scientists who hoped to lead the computer beyond the status of a mere calculating machine permanently received reinforcement. The famous trend-setting article of Licklider concerning new computer applications “Man-Computer-Symbiosis“ of 1960 proved to be true.

The number of scientists increased quickly, and all claimed expensive computer resources for themselves.
The investments for a single project amounted from a half up to 3 million $. Much research work took place at the same time on the same topic, and the computers were neither small nor cheap.

Computer programmes could not be transferred simply from one computer to another one. They were unicates. By cross-linking it is possible that researchers, who worked on similar projects in different regions, could share resources and exchange results more easily.
This was the firm conviction of Bob Taylor. One could advance the computer research thereby briskly and save also much money. The cross-linking of computers began as soon as a programm leader - Larry Robert - was nominated in December 1966.

Already in 1964 a new communication network was introduced (Paul Baran - Rand Corporation - USA, Donald Davies - England). It was a complex distribution net, i.e. it consisted of multiple loops and knots connected among themselves.
The large advantage consisted of the fact that in case of failure of one or several knots the entire data traffic didn’t collapse. The net was organized in such a way, that it searched automatically for another link for the data to its destination.

The data to be transported were divided into packages. The computers in the net ensure that each package reaches its goal correctly. If a link is closed or overloaded, the package is rerouted; if it arrives damaged, it is sent again until it is received correctly. At the destination all packages are brought back into the correct order, so that the received data agree with the sent ones. Therefore a central control unit is not necessary.

In 1969 the computers of four American universities were connected to each other by the computer company BBN (Bolz, Beranek and Newman). The universities in question were: the university of Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute, the university of Utah and the university of Santa Barbara. The connection took place by means of a special Honeywell computer, called interface message processor. The net functioned and was called “ Arpanet “ (grandfather of the Internet).

The net not only connected computers, but also many researchers. Communication between scientists increased enormously, because the connection between the computers opened the facilities to exchange reports, results and messages via an electronic way. The electronic post - E-Mail took an enormous upswing. Co-operation between the universities increased enormously.

The more resources via Arpanet became available and the more humans got acquainted to the computer, the more the net was used.

In order to exchange data between computers, the way of the data communication must be specified very exactly and unmistakably. The agreements are defined in a protocol. The Network Control Protocol ( NCP ) was used for the Arpanet.

In October 1972 the first international conference about computer communication ( ICCC ) took place in Washington.
Delegates from England, Canada, France, Japan, Norway and Sweden participated.

At that time Arpanet consisted already of 29 knots; therefore a detailed demonstration could be given. The managers of the telephone company (AT&T) still raised strong objections against the net with the packet switching procedure.

Also in 1972 the managers of several computer-linking projects from different States founded the Internationally Network Working Group ( INWG ). Ihr Vorsitzender wurde Vint Cerf.
Vint Cerf was nominated as chairman. They considered it now to be proved that the packet switching procedure within a country worked. Their statement was:

“Let us follow new ways and create an international net of the nets”

As a result an interconnection of nets with different technologies and speeds was realized. In order to reach this goal, a new protocol ( TCP - Transmission Control Protocol) had to be developed and introduced.

The connecting was first called Arpa -Internet, later only Internet (Intermediate net). So Internet is a net of the nets.

Because - among others - the TCP specification was made available free of charge and was also very useful for the many local area networks ( LANS ), this protocol quickly became a de-facto-standard; also for the linking of academically oriented networks.

In 1975 the first installation with TCP was realized on the computers of some American universities as well as on the University College in London.

In 1978 TCP became officially TCP/IP ( IP = Internet Protocol). Both protocols were the merit of Vint Cerf and Bob Khan. The fact that these protocols did not correspond to the recommendations of the International Standard Organization ( ISO ) led to many difficulties and quarrels.

During the summer of 1975 the network administration changed from Arpanet to the Defence Communications Agency ( DCA ).

Due to military security doubts the Arpanet was divided in 1983 into a military data traffic ( MILNET ) and a second subnetwork, which kept the name Arpanet.
In 1990 it was decided to deinstall the Arpanet.

The parallels and further developments

The foundation of “National Science Foundation” ( NSF ), in 1950, promoted scientific progress; it financed fundamental research. At the end of the 70’s it strongly committed itself to the area of computer and data processing technology. Thereby the national Science Foundation net developed ( NSFNET ) (father of the Internet); the experiences from Arpanet then flowed in there.

Already in 1988 the capacity of this net exceeded that of the Arpanet by far and took over all functions of the Arpanet.
A procedure, which made it possible to organize several public rounds of dialogues concerning certain topics, was offered by another service, namely USENET, essentially a method which allowed conversation.
In quick succession the possibilities of the Internet were extended by a number of new services and search programmes (e.g. Archie, Veronica, Gopher etc.).

In 1991 Tim Berners-Lee developed, at the European nuclear research center CERN in Geneva, a hypertext system (see appendix) with excellent user friendliness. This procedure unfolded fast to a most successful service in the Internet. It became known under the name World Wide Web ( WWW ) and exhibited an explosion-like growth.

The linking of the first four computers occurred only in 1969; thus it becomes clear, what a short interval has passed since the origins of the development of a global net.
Still the development runs so rapidly that it appears impossible to indicate, when the Internet will take its final form.

Appendix

Hypertext system

Hypertext is a text which the reader does not have to read in a certain order, but can follow linkages concerning further sources. Such links are not only to be found within a department or institute, but even all over the country and over the entire globe.
Thus the information in the WWW is not structured as a conventional text (e.g. books), that is to say the information doesn’t appear following each other from one page to the next, but there are links given - e.g. within the display - to further or continuing sources of information. So one may jump from one source of information to another one. This is named “to surf”. Footnotes therefore are unnecessary.

Aphorismen

• Das Internet gehört keiner Firma oder Organisation.
• Das Internet kennt keine Landesgrenzen.
• Das Internet unterliegt fortwährenden Umwandlungsprozessen und wächst ständig.
• Das Radio existierte 38 Jahre, bevor es 50 Millionen Zuhörer hatte, das Fernsehen brauchte 13 Jahre, um diese Zahl zu erreichen. Das Internet schaffte das in nur 4 Jahren.
• Das Internet gilt als größte Bibliothek der Welt.
• Das Netz gestattet es, auch vom entlegensten Dorf aus in der modernsten Bibliothek zu stöbern.
• Jeder kann mit dem Internet arbeiten und für seinen Themenbereich und seine Interessen Informationen abrufen.
• “Das einzige, was mich tröstlich stimmt, ist das Internet. Da sind meine Reden drin, und eine Menge von Bürgern rufen sie von dort ab. So bin ich nicht auf die Akzentsetzung von Journalisten angewiesen.” Roman Herzog
• Im Internet ist man ein Homo sapiens digitalis.
• Das Internet ist der größte Marktplatz.
• “Das Internet ist voll mit Antworten auf nie gestellte Fragen.” Norbert Schneider
• Das Netz ist ein dichter Datendschungel.
• “Das Internet ist ein Schrotthaufen, in dem Gold und Perlen versteckt sind.” Joseph Weizenbaum
• Es gibt nur kleine Fische im großen Netz.
• Homepage ist eine Art virtuelles Zuhause.
• Die Homepage im Netz, das ist nichts anderes als eine Egoprothese, die große seelische Befriedigung verschaffen kann.
• Freiheit für alle im Netz bedeutet auch Freiheit für schwarze Schafe.
• “Vor den Fernseher setzt man sich, wenn man sein Gehirn ausschalten will; vor dem Computer schaltet man es hingegen ein.” Bill Gates
• Was für eine Welt - in der ein 24jähriger ein Vermögen mit einem Stück Computersoftware machen kann.
• Die Gesellschaft verliere zunehmend die Orientierung. Sie stecke bis über die Ohren in einem Sumpf von Informationen, mit denen niemand etwas anzufangen wisse.
• Der Überfluss an Daten erscheint vielen Menschen wie eine Bedrohung; sie fühlen sich verloren und unsicher.
• Die Menschheit ist zum Werkzeug ihrer Werkzeuge geworden.
• Wenige Technologien haben so große Hoffnungen und zugleich so dramatische Ängste geweckt wie die Internet-Techniken.
• Das Internet ist sehr schwierig für denjenigen, der dazu keine Lust hat.
• Das Internet ist nichts für mich; daher finde ich es zu schwierig.
• WWW ist in Europa geboren, in den USA aufgewachsen.
• Verliebt, verlobt, vernetzt.

Benutzte Literatur:

· Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon,

Die Geschichte des Internet

· James Gillies, Robert Cailliau,

Die Wiege des Web

· Tim Berners-Lee,

Der Web-Report

· Michael Dertouzos,

What will be

· Clifford Stoll,

Die Wüste Internet

· ZEITPunkte

Der Mensch im Netz

· Stiftung Warentest

Internet - Nichts leichter als das

Aus dem Internet:

· Henry Edward Hardy,

A Short History of the Net

· Jochen Musch,

Die Geschichte des Netzes: ein historischer Abriß

· NIC Bibliothek

Geschichte des Internet

The author of this summary is Mr. Arnold Sloots.

This text as pdf file (approx. 79KB).

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