History

The history of the Internet begins with the 1958 establishment of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the United States. One of the first projects of the agency was to network nationwide radar systems. Eventually, U.S. military computers around the country were internetworked. With the help of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California – Los Angeles, ARPANET was created in 1969. ARPANET is considered the grandfather of the Internet. ARPANET took advantage of packet switching technology, which was invented earlier in the decade in the United Kingdom. A British packet switching network called Mark I began operation in 1970. By 1971, ARPANET had fifteen sites, and in 1974, the network was first referred to as the Internet.

Private contractors working on ARPANET developed a commercial version of the system called Telenet that began operating in 1975 with free dial-up telephone connections available in many U.S. cities. Three years later, ARPANET, Telenet, the Canadian DATAPAC, and the British Post Office allied to form an international packet switching network. The International Packet Switched Service reached Australia in 1981. The National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States sped up the Internet, and the resulting network was dubbed the NSFNET in 1988. The first commercial Internet service providers opened in 1989. As communication and computer manufacturers were allowed to build and sell their own networking components, the use of the Internet grew through the 1990s and 2000s at rates of up to 100 percent per year. Today, the estimated number of Internet users worldwide is 2 billion.