Classroom Publication

    In today's world, the Internet is a huge part of everyday life. It's used by every age group in some capacity, whether it be for research or contacting people.

    "I couldn't live without my computer. I use it for everything. I use it for homework and at my job and everywhere!" said University at Albany student, Juliana Coates.

    But, how many people know just how the Internet came to be? Below is a timeline that will serve to educate you on the history of the Internet.

1957 - USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. To combat the USSR, the U.S. forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).

1962 - J.C.R. Licklider of MIT developed a series of memos that discussed his "Galactic Network" concept. It detailed the idea that, though a globally interconnected set of computers, everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site.

1965 - ARPA sponsors a study on the "cooperative network of time-sharing computers."

1969 - (December) ARPA goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities.

1970 - The first packet radio network, ALOHAnet becomes operational. ARPANET host start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), which is the first host-to-host protocol.

1971 - Ray Tomlinson invents an email program to send messages across a distributed network. Michael Hart starts Project Gutenberg, which makes copyright-free works, including books, electronically available.

1972 - The first computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA. (March) - The @ sign is chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning. Tomlinson's email program is introduced to the public. (July) Larry Roberts writes the first email management program to list, file, forward, respond and selectively read messages.

1973 - First international connections to the ARPANET are made by the University College of London.

1974 - Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection" which discusses the idea of a Transmission Control Program (TCP).

1975 - Steve Walker of ARPANET created the first mailing list. John Vittal develops MSG, the first email program that includes replying, forwarding and filing all in one.

1976 - Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe develops Ethernet. This allowed coaxial cables to move data extremely fast, which helped lead to the development of LANs (Local Area Networks). Queen Elizabeth becomes the first state leader to send an email.

1978 - The Transmission Control Program is split into TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol).

1979 - ARPA creates the Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB). (April) Kevin MacKenzie emails the MsgGroup and suggests adding emotion into the texts of emails. He was laughed at, but today, that idea is known as the popular emoticons.

1980 - ARPANET comes to a standstill on October 27 because of an accidental status-message virus.

1981 - BITNET, which stands for "Because It's Time" Network, is created at the City University of New York. It provides electronic mail and listserv servers to distribute information, as well as file transfers.

1982 - DCA and ARPA establish the TCP and IP as the protocol suite for ARPANET. This leads to one of the first connected definitions of an "internet" as a connected set of networks.

1983 - Internet Activities Board is established. TCP/IP becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of the protocols, the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), allows users to log on to a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download the files on that computer.

1984 - Domain Name Servers (DNS) are established, with network addresses that are identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .net. The term "cyberspace" is created by writer William Gibson.

1985 - Quantum Computer Services debuts. Today, Quantum Computer Services is known as America Online.

1988 - A major virus called the Internet Worm strikes, temporarily shutting down around 10% of the Internet servers around the world.

1989 - Tim Berners-Lee of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) creates the World Wide Web, which uses hypertext to allow users to connect to different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks.

1990 - ARPANET ceases to exist. The World comes online and becomes the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access.

1991 - World Wide Web (WWW) is officially released to the public. The first Web server is launched under the domain, nxoc01.cern.ch. The University of Minnesota creates Gopher, a point-and-click navigation system.

1992 - The term "surfing the internet" is created by Jean Amour Polly.

1993 - The U.S. White House comes online at http://www.whitehouse.gov.

1994 - The first cyber station, RT-FM, broadcasts from Las Vegas.

1995 - Real Audio, an audio streaming technology, is also used for the first time. America Online, Prodigy, and CompuServe start offering dial-up Internet access.

1996 - Approximately 30 million people are using the Internet. The browser wars begin. Netscape and Microsoft battled it out, constantly trying to top each other's browsers. Macromedia Flash 1.0 launches and adds interactive animation to web pages.

1997 - The term "weblog" is coined.

1999 - Napster is created by a college student named Shawn Fanning. It allows users to swap music over the Internet. The number of Internet users is now at 150 million worldwide. The phrase "E-commerce" is created as online shopping becomes the new craze.

2000 - America Online buys Time Warner for $16 billion and it becomes the biggest merger of all time.

2001 - The 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in San Francisco rules that Napster is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing music.

2002 - (January) - 544.2 million people now using the Internet, worldwide. Napster temporarily shuts down

2003 - Apple introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each. Spam (unsolicited email) becomes a problem, accounting for nearly half of all emails. Napster relaunches as a subscription music service, requiring a payment to download music.

2004 - Firefox version 1.0 is launched by Mozilla.

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