How Did the Internet Get Its Start?

object to orbit the Earth. Americans were shocked by the news. The Cold War was at its peak, and the United States and the Soviet Union considered each other enemies, and if the Soviet Union could launch satellite into space, it could probably launch a missile to hit North America. So in nineteen fifty eight, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, as a direct response

to Sputnik's launch. ARPA's purpose was to give the United States a technological edge over other countries and perhaps specifically, the Soviet Union. One important part of ARPA's mission was computer science. In the nineteen fifties, computers were enormous devices that filled entire rooms. They had a fraction of the power and processing ability you can find in the cell phone in your pocket. Many computers could only read magnetic tape or punch cards, and there was no way to

network computers together. If you wanted to port information from one machine to another, you had to carry boxes of those punch cards or reels of that magnetic tape, and you couldn't transfer information from one type of computer to another. They all had to be similar machines running the same

operating system. ARPA aimed to change that. There had been theories written about how computers could change the world through their ability to process data, and about how they could be linked together to increase that processing power, but those theories had never been put into practice. So ARPET enlisted the help of a company called Bolt, Barneck and Newman or BBN to create a computer network, and the network had to connect four computers running at research facilities around

California on four different operating systems. They called the Network, which they established in nineteen sixty nine ARPINET. Without Arpinet, the Internet wouldn't look or behave the way it does today. It might not even exist. Arpinet's designers had to come up with a common set of rules that the network would follow in order for the computers to communicate with each other without crashing the whole system. These rules are

called protocols. Although other groups were working on ways to network computers together, the engineers behind arpinet established some of the protocols still used on the Internet today, TCPIP and FTP. Moreover, without the motivation and funding from ARPA, it may have taken many more years before anyone tried to find ways to join regional networks together into a larger system, But that got underway almost immediately after Arpinet came online and

began growing to include other computers around the US. In nineteen seventy three, engineers began to look at ways to connect Arpinet to a new ARPA project, packet radio networks or pr nets. These packet radio networks were early mobile networks. The connected computers, some housed in large operable vans, via radio transmitters and receivers, so instead of sending data across

phone lines, these computers used radio waves. It took three years, but in nineteen seventy six engineers successfully connected the two networks. Then in nineteen seventy seven technicians joinin ArbNet and pr net to an internationally designed computer network called the satellite network or satnet, which had also had its start in nineteen seventy three. They called this connection between multiple networks inter networking, or the Internet for short. Other early computer

networks soon joined. In nineteen ninety, a computer scientist from England named Tim berners Lee developed a system designed to simplify navigation on the Internet. In time, the system became known as the Worldwide Web. It didn't take long for some people to mistake the Internet and the Web as the same thing, but the Internet is a global interconnection of computer networks. The Worldwide Web is a way to navigate this massive network. It's like comparing an ocean to

a ship. There are other ships in the ocean of the Internet, but the Worldwide Web is the most popular. Most early Internet users were government and military employees, graduate students, and computer scientists, but using the world Wide Web, the Internet became much more accessible. Colleges and universities began to connect to the Internet, then hobbyists and members of the

public and businesses soon followed. By nineteen ninety four, internet commerce had become a reality, with pizza Hut being one of the first, if not the first online merchants. Pizza Net was a program piloted by a franchise in Santa Cruz, California. You could go online to pizza dot net, fill out a form with your delivery info and order, and it

would be delivered. It worked by submitting the data from the forum to a server in Pizza Hut's home base in Wichita, which then sent the order to a computer at the restaurant in Santa Cruz, where an employee would receive it and call you to confirm the order. Several organizations and committees formed to help shape the Internet into to what it is today. They included the Internet Activities Board, and the US Federal Research Internet Coordinating Committee and Federal

Networking Council, among others. These groups work to establish the rules and standards that make it possible for different computer networks to work together, and today the Internet is more complex than ever. It connects computers, satellites, mobile devices, and other gadgets together in a massive network millions of times more intricate than the original Apronet and the thing we owe it all to a nebulously threatening, silvery beeping ball

that once orbited miles above Earth's surface. Today's episode is based on the article how did the Internet Start? On how stuffworks dot com, written by Jonathan Strickland. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with housetuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.