In the 1950s and early 1960s, prior to the widespread inter-networking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network.

Some networks had gateways or bridges between them, but these bridges were often limited or built specifically for a single use. One prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe method, simply allowing its terminals to be connected via long leased lines. This method was used in the 1950s by Project RAND to support researchers collaborating across the USA.

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1981. A fundamental pioneer in the call for a global network, J.C.R. Licklider, articulated the idea in his January 1960 paper, Man-Computer Symbiosis.

He saw the future of this interconnectedness as, "A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines" which provided "the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions.

In 1974, the term Internet was first used by Vinton Cerf (known as the "Father of the Internet") and Bob Kahn in a paper on Transmission Control Protocol.

Commercial interests hit in 1974 when BBN developed a commercial version of ARPANET called Telenet. It was the first commercially available packet-switching network and was widely used by early online services like Compuserve and GEnie.

On January 1st 1983, every machine connected to ARPANET had to switch from the Network Control Protocol (NCP) to the Transmission Control Protocol TCP/IP.
By TCP/IP replacing NCP entirely, the foundation for the Internet as we know it today was born. Steve Case founded America Online.

As interest in wide spread networking grew and new applications for it arrived, the Internet's technologies spread throughout the rest of the world.
TCP/IP's network-agnostic approach meant that it was easy to use any existing network infrastructure to carry Internet traffic.

Many sites unable to link directly to the Internet started to create simple gateways to allow transfer of e-mail, at that time the most important application. Sites which only had intermittent connections used UUCP or FidoNet and relied on the gateways between these networks and the Internet. Some gateway services went beyond simple e-mail peering, such as allowing access to FTP sites via UUCP or e-mail.

During the late 1980s, the first Internet service provider (ISP) companies were formed.

Tim Berners-Lee published a paper proposing a "world wide web" in 1992 which was released by CERN, and Jean Armour Polly coined the phrase "surfing the Internet." Web sites showed up on the Internet for the first time while US Vice President Al Gore coined term "Information Superhighway" in 1994.

WWW Timeline

Yahoo, the first Internet search engine, was created in April 1994

In the summer of 1995, Pierre Omidyar was having dinner at home in Campbell with his fiancée, Pam Wesley. Wesley collected PEZ dispensers, and she mentioned that she was having trouble finding fellow collectors to trade with. He came to Wesley's rescue by writing the code for what would one day become eBay. The domain name ebay.com was registered in August 1995, the beginning of the largest online person-to-person trading community.

Most Internet traffic was carried by backbones of independent ISPs for a fee. Microsoft saw this gigantic potential for the Internet and soon released its own browser, the MS Internet Explorer, for free in 1996.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997 while the shorter version, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999. Since its inception, blogging has emerged as a popular means of communication, affecting public opinion and mass media around the world.

Although blogs had been around since 1997, it wasn't until 2004 that the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream as political consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion formation. Webster's Dictionary declared 'blog' as the word of the year in 2004.

Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, brought Google to life in September 1998 answering roughly 10,000 search queries a day. By 1999 it was handling 500,000 queries per day, and by 2000 it was up to 100 million queries a day. Currently Google indexes over 4.28 billion web pages and provides over 250 million search results per day.

Worldwide Online Population Forecast

In its "Worldwide Online Population Forecast, 2006 to 2011," JupiterResearch anticipates that a 38 percent increase in the number of people with online access will mean that, by 2011, 22 percent of the Earth's population will surf the Internet regularly.

North America will remain on top in terms of the number of people with online access. According to JupiterResearch, online penetration rates on the continent will increase from the current 70 percent of the overall North American population to 76 percent by 2011.

As the online population of the United States and Canada grows by about only 3 percent, explosive adoption rates in China and India will take place, says JupiterResearch.

The report says China should reach an online penetration rate of 17 percent by 2011 and India should hit 7 percent during the same time frame.

By 2011, Asians will make up about 42 percent of the world's population with regular Internet access, 5 percent more than today,







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