Revisiting the Past on the Fortieth Birthday of the Internet
2nd September was the fortieth anniversary of the internet. These days we use the internet daily for a range of purposes that include getting in touch with other people, looking for information, and for its sheer entertainment value.
However, once computer networking was a concept that was considered rather difficult to achieve, and networking via mobile broadband was something unthinkable. It is a wonder that such a complicated system has grown so much in forty years’ time from such humble beginnings.
The “world wide web” is a term that we are all familiar with today. It was first used in 1989 by Tim Berners Lee when he proposed a system that could create linkages among documents across different systems throughout the world by using the internet.
If we go further back in time, we see that on September 2nd 1969, two computers were linked to each other at the University of Los Angeles in California by using a 15 feet long wire. This subsequently became a university network. Then on October 29th 1969, two computers shared information across a long distance. This date is considered to be the birth date of the internet, since it was the first time computers used a process that we all use even now; i.e. using data packets by breakage at one computer and then reassembling it while it enters another computer.