Who Really Invented the Internet?

The Wall Street Journal ^ | July 23, 2012 | L. GORDON CROVITZ

[Pharmboy]

Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war.

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."

It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.

For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project....

...by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network—a "world-wide web." The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did?

[Reeses]

just to name a few of the peace-time revolutions fostered there with that model.

That was a hot peace-time. The Cold War ran from 1947–1991. We owe a good percentage of America's current wealth and prosperity to it. What we could really use now is Cold War II, with Germany and Japan on our side and China playing opposition. China is making claims on historical territories like Germany did leading up to WWII so we may just get one. Hey China, those are some nice T-Bills you got there.

[mquinn]

I was about to post that too but decided to look at the existing comments to see if there was already a smart cookie here. Good show. :)

I found it to be an utterly fascinating read; the excitement at the first messages relayed from one site to another, troubleshooting with an oscilloscope, etc...

[NonLinear]

What?

I thought the crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe!

‘

[Uri’el-2012]

Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto)

Let not forget Datapoint corporation which
produced the Datapoint 2200 programmable
microprocessor in the form of a PC in 1970.

It included a complete Disk Operating System in 1972.

Aside from being one of the first personal computers, the Datapoint 2200 has another connection to computer history. Its original design called for a single-chip 8-bit microprocessor for the CPU, rather than a conventional processor built from discrete TTL modules. In 1969, CTC contracted two companies, Intel and Texas Instruments, to make the chip. TI was unable to make a reliable part and dropped out. Intel was unable to make CTC's deadline. Intel and CTC renegotiated their contract, ending up with CTC keeping its money and Intel keeping the eventually completed processor.[2]

CTC released the Datapoint 2200 using about 100 discrete TTL components (SSI/MSI chips) instead of a microprocessor, while Intel's single-chip design, eventually designated the Intel 8008, was finally released in April 1972.[3] The 8008's seminal importance lies in its becoming the ancestor of Intel's other 8-bit CPUs, which were followed by their assembly language compatible 16-bit CPU's—the first members of the x86-family, as the instruction set was later to be known. Thus, CTC's engineers may be said to have fathered the world's most commonly used and emulated instruction set architecture from the mid-1980s to date.

Equally significant is the fact that the terminal's multi-chip CPU (processor) became the embryo of the x86 architecture upon which the original IBM PC and its descendants are based.

[zeugma]

I remember the transition from BBS and the internet being like an exclusive club and the invasion of the bohunk WebTvers.

I still remember the day that AOL was connected to the net, and it was invaded by the unwashed hordes.

[Ben Mugged]

DARPA? PLATO preceded DARPA Net.

PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) was the first (ca. 1960, on ILLIAC I) generalized computer assisted instruction system, and, by the late 1970s, comprised several thousand terminals worldwide on nearly a dozen different networked mainframe computers. Originally, PLATO was built by the University of Illinois and functioned for four decades, offering coursework (elementary–university) to UIUC students, local schools, and other universities. Several descendant systems still operate.

The PLATO project was assumed by the Control Data Corporation (CDC), who built the machines with which PLATO operated at the University. CDC President William Norris planned to make PLATO a force in the computer world; the last production PLATO system was shut down in 2006 (coincidentally, just a month after Norris died), yet it established key on-line concepts: forums, message boards, online testing, e-mail, chat rooms, picture languages, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, and multi-player games.

[hamboy]

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Robert Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox.

I agree. Xerox PARC came up first with the concept on local area network. Xerox PARC also invented mouse, touch screen, GUI, etc...

[Reeses]

The PLATO project, initially funded by the military, also invented the first plasma display screen. Today many foodstampers enjoy plasma screens in their living rooms while they bid their time for the O’Bastard to get laid off.

[LibertyRocks]

So many people have no clue as to just how much is even sub-contracted from those contracted producers. My husband is a machinist and has helped build a great many things that our government, military, and scientific agencies use. Once in a while he’s worked on projects where everything is under armed guards (some years back). The “government” can’t do ANYTHING on their own, and even when it tries to supposedly “help” business and technology 99.9% of the time it’s a payback to cronies who could care less if the job is actually done, or done well at all.

I’m getting off-track because this whole attitude that the President has brought to light is being defended by some real idiots in our world. What I wish is that all those people - including our President would go buy an island somewhere and try to make it with all of their rules, and NO HELP from anywhere else. They’d all be starving or dead within a year (depending on climate).

[matt04]

I am sure it would be at least 20 years behind where it is today or still just a university based curiosity.

Government mandate of IE 6?

[catnipman]

“PCR - Polymerase Chain Reaction which is the basis for all of modern molecular biology, invented by some surfer dude out of Santa Cruz named Kary Mullis in ‘83, not inside your 20 year window, but think of all that flowed from the fruit of that tree since. “

PCR is transformational and I should have added that to my list (being as how it’s from the ‘80s), but I’m not as well-versed in the bio-sciences as some of the others. And as far as that goes, discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick should have been on the list as well.

[Mycroft Holmes]

This is what you could do with an Alto in 1973. Pity we only sold 2000 units. At $15K it was a steal.

[Uri’el-2012]

I think the real jump start was the Work of Tim Berniers-Lee. I always wondered if he had a MAC, because they had search capabilities on MAC’s, but it was limited to one machine. I see that contribution of his to link searches across networks as the big jump in the internet.

Tim Berniers-Lee used a Steve Job's NeXT
which was the start of Apple OS X which is Unix.

This NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first web server.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Al Gore did so invent the Internet. He would never lie to us about something so important. /s

[Bob]

But, it was private individuals who made it small enough and powerful enough and fast enought so that you could view porn at home

It is amazing at just how many technical innovations and their implementation into common usage have been driven by porn.

And cats.

But mostly porn.

I've heard at various times that porn was largely responsible for pushing the development and the eventual success of the VHS video format. (I suppose that the extra picture quality of BetaMax format just wasn't needed by the porn industry.)

[Uri’el-2012]

This is what you could do with an Alto in 1973.

What chip set and programming language did it use ?

Did it have an op/sys ?

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. There has been an amazing loss of institutional memory in so short a time.

[Mycroft Holmes]

It was a 12-bit microcode Nova emulation built out of TTL in it's hardware. The thing it had was hardware bit block transfer, which meant you could copy graphics across byte boundaries without paying the penalty of unwrapping the bits.

We owned the microcode and it was adapted for whatever higher level language we were running. The best of these were Mesa/Cedar and Pilot/Copilot. Mesa is what Java (language, not script) has finally become. Pilot/Copilot was a world-swap debugger that as far as I know, the likes of which doesn't exist anywhere. Also ran Lisp and Smalltalk as well as B & C.

Good times.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Yup. I remember that. I was torqued that I couldn’t connect at other than 14.4k on my fabulous 28.8k modem. IIRC, we had to dial different phone numbers to connect at different baud rates.

+++
ATH

[Mycroft Holmes]

NeXT OS was sweet, and technically should have won. Sigh.