An inseparable part of life in the twenty first century, the Internet has come a long way since its inception in the early eighties. The Internet, today, is ubiquitous and touches our lives in more ways than we can imagine. From simple tasks like emails, music and video sharing and hooking up with long lost friends via social networking to behaving as a full time assistant to help us achieve higher efficiency at work by letting us access our documents and files anywhere, and on the go, the Internet is inconspicuous by its omnipresence. No wonder then that an estimated 1.6 billion people across the world are using it today, with the figure rising steadily with each passing day.
It therefore seems unimaginable that the Internet, which has become an integral part of our lives today, didn’t even exist a few decades back. The present day structure of the Internet was developed in the late 70s but it was only in the latter part of the 90s that it gained widespread popularity.
The first seeds of the present day Internet were sowed in the early 60s when researchers saw great potential in connecting computers to allow scientists to share their findings. At the height of the cold war in the year 1962, scientists at the United States’ Advanced Research Project Agency (or ARPA) of the Department of Defense first developed the concept of packet switching which was to later form the basis for all Internet connections. The first connection between two computers was made in the year 1965 when a computer in California was connected to one in Massachusetts. The connection was established over a telephone line and researchers tried sending the word ‘log’ over the connection but the systems crashed after the second letter ‘o’ was being transmitted.