| 1945 |
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Vannevar Bush's memex idea (a conceptual machine that could store vast amounts of information, in which a user had the ability to create information "trails": links of related text and illustrations). |
| 1957 |
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The USSR launches Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite. This prompts the United States to form the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to establish US lead in science and technology applicable to the military. |
| 1960 |
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Ted Nelson (inspired by the memex idea) begins developing the modern hypertext (referred to as non-sequential writing). |
| 1962 |
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Paul Baran, of the RAND Corporation, is commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to study how it could maintain its command and control over its missiles and bombers after a nuclear
attack. Baran's finished document, "On Distributed Communications Networks," describes several ways to accomplish this. His final proposal is a packet switched network. |  |
| 1968 |
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Doug Englebart's hyperdocument presentation (collaborative hypermedia). |
| 1972 |
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The first e-mail program is created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN.
Ted Nelson's Xanadu system (original hypertext and interactive multimedia system) was running using Algol and Fortran programming languages.
Bob Kahn gives first public demo of ARPANET at Spring Joint Computer Conference.
|
| 1973 |
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Development begins on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol is intended to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other. |
| 1974 |
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First use of term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in a paper on Transmission Control Protocol.
Theodor (Ted) Nelson publishes Literary Machines, proposing a worldwide hypertext system for publishing and maintaining literatures.
|
| 1979 |
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USENET (the decentralized news group network) is created by Steve Bellovin, a graduate student at University of North Carolina, and programmers Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis. |
| 1981 |
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National Science Foundation creates backbone called CSNET 56 Kbps network for institutions without access to ARPANET. Vint Cerf proposes a plan for an inter-network connection between CSNET and the ARPANET.
CSNET was established as a community network linking all computer science departments and research laboratories. It integrated phonemail, ARPANET, and X.25 networks. It developed community representation and was self-supporting after 5 years. The Cerf-Kahn proposal to allow traffic from commercial CSNET sites to travel on ARPANET was a breakthrough (opening up the use of networks) and occurred around 1984.
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| 1983 |
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On January 1st, every machine connected to ARPANET must use TCP/IP. TCP/IP becomes the core Internet protocol.
The University of Wisconsin creates the Domain Name System (DNS). This allows packets to be directed to a domain name, which is then translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This makes it much more convenient for people to access other servers. |
| 1989 |
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NSFNET started as backbone to connect NSF-supported supercomputing centers; evolved from NSF experience with CSNET.
|
| 1990 |
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Tim Berners-Lee and CERN in Geneva implements a hypertext system to provide efficient information access to the members of the international high-energy physics community. |
| 1992 |
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Internet Society is chartered.
World-Wide Web released by CERN. |
| 1993 |
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InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and database services (by AT&T), registration services (by Network Solutions Inc.), and information services (by General Atomics/CERFnet).
Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develop a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X". |
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]
