The Internet

1. Then(1962 to 1993):

   The whole concept of the internet started with the Cold War fear by the US Government that if their command post "the pentagon" were bombed by the Russians then there would be a total loss of command and control of the fighting forces. There needed to be a way for information to still flow out to the fighting forces and continue to function as a unit if the command post were destroyed by the enemy. What was needed was a way to interconnect that information from different locations in an instant. The concept of rerouting information to where it needed to be even if certain links in communication were destroyed was born and funded by the government to certain locations at major universities in the US.

   TCP/IP(transfer control protocol/internet protocol) was the common protocol used to transfer text information from one place to another. The scientist that worked there soon came to realize that they could share information about their projects or discuss different ideas in an instant through e-mail or transfer files of information back and forth through other means.

   (file transfer protocol) working in conjuction with TCP/IP was a way of moving large volumes of information. Databanks could be setup to store information at certain places and then they could go out to them and retrieve or update those databases at will.

   Soon other protocols such as Telnet, Archie, Gopher, and Veronica were called into being to help locate and retrieve information. Gopher was a big advancement in how information got displayed for viewing because it offered a menu of things to pick from for the first time. Major universities and libraries soon came to rely on this means of information transfering a great deal. The Cold War became less of a threat and soon afterwards the transfer of function from "war device concept" to the "information highway" around the world took place. While still in the hands of scientific organization such as the NSF(National Science Foundation) a better means of displaying information through the use of pictures(graphics) was invented by coming up with a language that would allow for displaying images as well as sound.

   HTML(hypertext markup language) helped to display it in an application called a browser that would function with the assistance of another protocol like HTTP(hypertext transfer protocol).

   The first browser to come into being in 1992 was Mosiac. After that the world wide web and the commerical growth of the internet took off.

   Now(1993 to present):

   Today, all the basic tools mentioned above like FTP, Telnet, Gopher, etc.. are all roled into your commerical browser whether that browser is Mosaic, Netscape, Internet Explorer or some other brandname. So you don't have to use a separate application to perform those functions although you can still download the software to do that if you want to..........NERD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !