• Question: when was internet invented

    Asked by meganmcg to Angela, Gabriele, Karen, Maria, Shane on 15 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Angela Stevenson

      Angela Stevenson answered on 15 Nov 2013:


      Hi Megan! That was traced back to 1958.. when the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was established to research and develop new technology by the US military. It only really began a bit later though, in 1966, when computers became more popular and smaller (they filled up a whole room at the start!). Hope that helps 🙂

    • Photo: Karen McCarthy

      Karen McCarthy answered on 15 Nov 2013:


      The internet was invented by lots of processes, rather than just one person really. Many people designed and invented different aspects of it – the idea of sharing information via computers, how this information could be transmitted, and also the rules governing this information sharing.

      Ray Tomlinson for example, invented email, whilst Abhay Bhushan developed the tools for file transfer protocols.

      The World Wide Web, which is what most people mean when they say Internet, was invented in 1990, by Tim Berners-Lee. Because its the most popular and widely used version of Internet, most people think they are one and the same!

      Theres so much information about this, but heres a nice article if youre interesting in learning more!

      http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/inventions/who-invented-the-internet.htm

    • Photo: Gabriele De Chiara

      Gabriele De Chiara answered on 15 Nov 2013:


      Hello,
      internet was invented by physicists at Cern in Geneva in 1990! They needed a fast way to exchange data generated in the experiments and Tim Berners-Lee set up WWW as a protocol for this. You can read more here:
      http://home.web.cern.ch/about/birth-web

      This actually shows an example on why it is of uttermost importance to financially support fundamental science. Scientists use very advanced technology in their investigations on sub-atomic particles, quantum physics and so on. This may seem useless, but as a byproduct scientists invent new technology that can be exported to real life. Same goes for the laser that was just an academic amusement.

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