Timeline - Key Events in the History of the Internet

1969

ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.

1972

Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

1973

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in 1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.

1984

Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu.

Writer William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace.”

1985

Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and other information.

1988

A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.

1989

The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.

Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics). Unlike other Internet protocols, such as FTP and email, the Web is accessible through a graphical user interface.

1991

Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.

Another indexing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), is developed by Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp.

1994

The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov.

Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary.

Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

1995

CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access.

Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.

The Vatican launches its own website, www.vatican.va.

1997

On July 8, 1997, Internet traffic records are broken as the NASA website broadcasts images taken by Pathfinder on Mars. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day.

The term “weblog” is coined. It’s later shortened to “blog.”

1998

Google opens its first office, in California.

1999

College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap music over the Internet.
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999. More than 50% are from the United States.
“E-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly spreads.

MySpace.com is launched.