History of the internet

History of the Internet
Where would we be without the Internet today? Many of us take this extraordinary technology of networking for granted and is so intertwined into our lives that we would be lost without it. The start of the Internet began with the race for the first man on the moon and the start of ARPA. With the advent of the Internet many people started to formulate ideas to start up business opportunities and make more money than they ever dreamed of making. Some of these businesses kept on moving forward with innovation and became big players in the industry. One type of business that helped make the Internet grow exponentially popular in the beginning for the personal user outside of the work area was the Adult Internet industry. Not everyone got a PC and plugged into the Internet for just after hours “entertainment” however, the benefit of having E-mail and the whole E-mail information revolution was more than enough to make this hefty purchase. First off, how did the Russians get the ball rolling for us back in the late fifties?
The Russian satellite Sputnik was successfully launched and had been able to make a full orbit around our moon. This proceeds to spark an international technology race with the Untied State against Russia to put the first man on the moon (Gromov). The U.S. counteracted with President Eisenhower addressing the matter and he starts the government funded Advance Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 with the pentagon in charge of 5 billion dollars for the project. With this tuned focus on obscure mathematics and in ordinary relay of the communication of information the Internet was born.
Many tech savvy nerds began formulating ideas that they would be able to carry out and harness this new frontier of wealth. It was almost like a land grab or gold rush. Almost overnight stores started popping up all over the net. One of these prospectors was one Jeff Bezos who started the small company of Amazon. His idea was to start simply selling books, because everyone knew what the product looks like and will know what they are receiving with no funny business to be had (Nerds). After the promise and support of venture capital investors and many customers served, Amazon is one of the largest Internet shopping sites today and has been for many years.
Amazon is one of the biggest companies for Internet sales, but what about software, networking, and hardware? There are four big names that made computers what they are today. Those companies are Xerox, 3Comm, Novell, and IBM. Xerox and IBM were the top companies for innovative system development. Novell and Cisco Systems were established at different times, but both were the go to companies for networking hardware and software. Novell was supposed to be crushed by Microsoft according to Glen Klinerock (Nerds). Bill Gates threw money at the LAN department in Microsoft to get an edge on Novell’s 55% market hold, but after the statistics came in for the year of 1990 Novell now had an 75% hold on the market. Later everyone got a stern memo from Gates stating his frustration with these numbers. Microsoft however won in the end (Gromov).
The Adult Entertainment Industry has a huge influence on the Internet today, with pop up ads and simply any ad that you are to come across on any site you go to. Back then there wasn’t videos or the capability to stream yourself, so business was conducted in chat rooms (Nerds). These types of chat rooms have been popular and profitable since the dawn of computers and even today.
A new form of technology has been introduced in the last several decades that have fundamentally transformed human society. It is changing the way people communicate with each other and it is called E-mail. The E-mail information revolution began with terminal networking in the pentagon back in 1962, which was developed by IBM. The terminal computer network was run as a mainframe and was able to send the first packets of information. However it only worked in house, because the distance of the wired network didn’t extend very far and the cost of these terminals was very unreasonable for the average company let alone consumer (Gromov). With further growth and innovation the personal computers hit the scene and everyone was getting plugged in, because by the time the growth of internet users started to increase exponentially all of the U.S. was connected. There weren’t any borders anymore and one could use E-mail to communicate with family, collages, or anybody who had Internet capabilities in an instant.
In conclusion the history of the internet gave birth to new ideas, new ways to communicate, share information, and new big business. Many of us take this extraordinary technology of networking for granted and it is so intertwined into our lives that we would be lost without it. We can thank President Eisenhower and the Space Race against Russia for the first real network. Also the companies big and small that started the need to have a computer and a network to go with it. Finally the huge shift in communication and convenience of email exemplified what the internet was.