The 'Internet' Turns 40... Happy Birthday !!!

On October 4th 1957, Russia launched "SPUTNIK" which the United States saw as a major threat to security. within a year the U.S. formed the "Advanced Research Projects Agency" or ARPA. In 1962 ARPA created IPTO (Information Processing Technology Office) which was headed by Joseph Licklider, who was the first person to start thinking about computers talking to each other...

ARPA needed to find a way to tie the computers together so they could communicate and for the next 6 years, research was done that paved the way for deciding how the system would be built and what kind of protocols would be used. Finally on October 29th, 1969 (40 years ago today) the first communications between 2 computers took place on the ARPANET server which was set up between UCLA and Stanford.

The first "system crash" occurred during the initial login sequence (they were only able to type the first 2 letters of the word "login" before the system went down, but it at least the server had been officially "up and running")

Computers were completely different back then - a computer took up an entire room and they had to set up "schedules" of time so the many different users would be able to do the work they needed to accomplish...

Since that time the internet has grown by leaps and bounds. Rather than one specific giant computer running the internet, it consists of billions of computers located all around the world... You can actually setup your own server, which becomes part "of" the internet (and you can actually turn it into a business that makes money re-selling domains and providing service to other people or businesses...)

The internet has become a giant storage system where billions and billions of pieces of information are stored, filtered, processed and can be used by anyone able to access the net. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to use the internet - store information - find information - locate items - sell or purchase items - play games - interact with social groups - read the news - write your own news - the list goes on and on forever and hopefully will continue to grow...