Who Invented the Internet?

The internet is a fantastic resource, but have you ever wondered who invented the internet?

Where and when did the internet originate?

Although it appears that the internet was founded yesterday, it is actually over a century old. Furthermore, individuals and organizations from all over the world contribute to it. However, the long history occurred in two waves. First, the theoretical notion of the internet and, second, the actual building of the internet.

Let’s begin with the theoretical notion of the internet.

The internet’s origins go back to the early 1900s when Nikola Tesla proposed a “global wireless system”. He claimed that if given enough power, the presence of such a system would enable him to send messages all over the world without the use of cables.

By the early 1900s, Tesla was hard at work attempting to find out how to harness enough energy to send communications across vast distances. However, Guglielmo Marconi made the first transatlantic radio communication in 1901. He sent the Morse-code signal for the letter “S” from England to Canada.

Tesla then aspired to do something larger. He attempted to persuade his patron, J.P. Morgan, the most influential man on Wall Street at the time, to fund his study on the “global telegraphy system.” The plan was to establish a centre capable of broadcasting communications at the speed of light all across the world. However, Morgan finally ceased sponsoring Tesla’s research because the concept sounded far-fetched. Despite these setbacks, Tesla struggled to make his concept a reality and pushed his idea of a global system until his death in 1943, but he never saw it realised. Tesla was the first to imagine such a radical mode of communication.

What is the ARPANet?

The ARPANet project was responsible for the first major stages in the development of the Internet. The US Department of Defense (DoD) financed a study to develop technology that could maintain computer networks even when the computers linked to the network ran different operating systems.

Larry Roberts was the ARPANet project’s programme manager, and he was extensively involved in the system’s architecture. Mike Wingfield, an engineer, created the interface that allowed a computer to interact with an Internet Message Processor (IMP), a device that permitted multiple computers to communicate across the same network. The initial data was sent from a host at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) via an interface message processor switch on September 2, 1969.

Finally, Charley Kline, a UCLA student, sent the first message transmitted over this precursor to the internet at 10:30 p.m. on October 29, 1969. Kline attempted to enter “login,” but the system only managed to send “lo” to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) several hundred miles distant before crashing.

Despite what seemed like a failure, this was a global first in two ways. Firstly, it was the first message transmitted via the internet and secondly, it was the first server crash.

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