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Who Invented The Internet Have you ever wondered who invented the Internet? Well it was not Al Gore even though 2 million websites might try to give you that view. In fact there are more theories as to how the Internet got started than what we can write on any given web page. So, when the question is coined as to who invented the Internet you will receive more than a hundred different answers, yet they may all be correct.
But who invented the concept behind the Internet and when did this take place? What you are about to hear might disappoint you. There is no single person who created the Internet as we know it today. The Internet is viewed as many as an amalgamation of inventions and failures both by the military and academic research. The Internet just happened, so to speak. There was no architect who sat down to create it. |
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There are many theories abound however to define the concept “Internet”. We have to look at who created a document or theory that would allow people to communicate by computer with each other. The Internet came to being by a number of failed projects. The first cog in the wheel of the Internet was the creators of “Packet Switching”. The concept behind packet switching is that it allows data to be moved from one computer to another. It allows the data to be broken down and sent via smaller “packets” to another computer. Each “packet” is labeled as to where it is going and where it is coming from.
In October 1969 Leonard Kleinrock and his assistants sent a message from UCLA to Stanford Research as part of the ARPANET project. During 2004, Leonard Kleinrock at the supposable 35th anniversary of the birth of the Internet stated that his team had invented the concept of the Internet. Many have disputed this for various reasons. |
ARPANET was a military project that was created not for mass communication but the share computer resources between government and institutional labs. This setup was to process scientific information on the fastest computer possible. Networking was not fully possible as most of the computers ran on different operating systems. So who did invent the Internet? Some say that it was by Vinton Cerf, Bob Kahn, Bob Braden, and Jon Postel and members of the Networking Group which was then headed by Steve Crocker. They created the TCP/IP protocol which is in use in computers today. This prototype was tested in 1975 and in 1978 TCP/IPv4 was released. What this did was something that ARPANET could not do and that was to connect all computers on a network irrespective of their network protocols. |
Asking who invented the Internet is a loaded question. The Internet is not only the idea of looking at compatible networks, but also email which was invented in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson a subcontractor with ARPANET. Without any of the telephone companies adapting their equipment to allow this form of communication over their telephone lines, maybe the Internet would not have invented after all. There are many contributors to the concept of the Internet as we know it today, but no sole inventor who sat down and created a mass communication tool. The bases of networks were created with ARPANET, applications such as email was created a few years later and after that an adaptable protocol was invented to connect everyone together. Each pioneer during the last century had contributed to what the Internet has become: not only pioneers on invention but telecommunication companies who saw the possibility of mass adoption of the concept of communication by computer.
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