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?

[Pharmboy]

A just-in-case-you-might-be-interested ping...

[Gaffer]

I remember it also, but I wouldn’t say it was a ‘government’ thing per se. The government PAID for high speed comm backbones for university data transfer between researchers.

If I recall correctly, it was I think an MIT researcher who invented the HTML protocol that facilititated data transfer more easily. I don’t remember the name, but it was his protocol that became the ‘internet’.

[Usagi_yo]

No, that was milnet, carried over arpanet.

Politicians have this attitude that ‘if they allowed us to do something then they must have had something to do with it’.

[Beowulf9]

Can you imagine some little guy looking at this in what...? the back of a DC Comic book?

Yes, now we have it on the net:)

Lol.

[Usagi_yo]

Vint Cerf did not invent TCP/IP, He can be credited with NCP, and he still owes me $20 bucks.

[Usagi_yo]

I’m amazed at the institutional memory loss on what really built the internet. Colleges and Universities so we could play nettrek and email each other pictures of naked ladies.

Who remembers Seismo? and UUCP — the company?

[Uri’el-2012]

ROLM, the first major PBX manufacturer to make Voice Mail work

The DMTS for whom I worked at Bell Labs
was awarded the patent for AUDIX in 1987

[P.O.E.]

The idea of packet switching came from Rand Corp.

Let’s also not forget long-distance signaling, the transistor, and microwaves from Ma Bell (as well as Bell Labs’ Unix)

[Mycroft Holmes]

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

As a 20 year PARC vet I can attest to that. With Bill Gunning, I am personally responsible for 10-base-T ethernet and laser mice (solo).

I, for one, welcome our new Cybernetic Overlords /.

[maryz]

Thanks! At least I remembered DARPA didn’t come up with it! :)

[Bobalu]

For a couple of years I ran the only BBS in Cape Girardeau MO.

I wrote the simple software myself in BASIC and 6502 assembler for the old Vic 20. Then I ported it to the Commodore 64 and ran it from a eprom cartridge. It used an old Cat modem and a relay controlled the phone line switching. I had a reed switch taped to the ringer coil in the phone to detect incoming calls.

The BBS had chat with the sysop which was very popular, an online text based game, rudimentary email and a raucous forum. That phone line was always in use. It cost me 4 dollars a month because I got the service that had free incoming calls but cost by the minute for outgoing...there were never any outgoing calls. When I connected two more lines and three people could connect at once and chat live it created a sensation

I also ran the only dial-a-joke service in town...built that equipment from scratch. It was called A1-Automated Time. (that name meant I was the first listing in the phone book- alphabetically) You got a voice with the correct time and then the day's joke.

I still remember the first joke. "What's old and wrinkled and smells like ginger?" ........ Fred Astair's face.

That joke caused a front-page story in the local paper ;-)

The only other dial-up lines were 8 of them that connected students to the old IBM mainframe at SEMO university. I had a small computer room with terminals and printers where fellow students would come to work on the SEMO system.

I used 4 old VHS handie talkies to put a terminal inside my old VW bus that connected back to my home phone line. I ran a mobile computer lab that became a popular hangout in the student parking lot... there was never an empty seat in the computer lab so they would line up to use the terminal in the VW. Power came from a deep-cycle marine battery and an invertor. I made a lot of good friends with that gear :-)

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Good link!

[GreyFriar]

the gorey truth about the creation of the internet.

[yldstrk]

yeah being a lawyer is not too fun

[yldstrk]

well you have to understand that relations for the decent women start with being treated well during the day. If you are mean and nasty during the day and then aggressive at night, it isn’t going to work out so well. Forgetting birthdays, not helping etc doesn’t make a woman feel loved, and then if you want to play she feels used.

[Leep]

Obama said: “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

---

He could not have made a greater,or dumber, statement.
He summed up in one sentence what at heart and soul he truly believes.
Anyone who owns a bussiness, or indirectly derives a income from bussiness or industry, would have to be flat out crazy to vote to reelect this authoritarian control freak nutwad.

[Mr. K]

Edison was an A-hole to Tesla, I know that much

Tesla was a SUPER-GENIOUS ~!!

God only knows where we could bbe if Edison had supported him rather than stiff him for the money he promised him.

Stupid Edison even went so far as to not allow Tesla to use ‘screw in’ light bulb sockets for florescent bulbs Tesla invented (for the Worlds Fair)

Tesla wasted more time and energy fighting Edison than anything else.

And Edison was 100% wrong on every issue. He died knowing it too- on his deathbed he regretted sticking to DC current when AC is vastly superior in so many ways.

[ELS]

bttt

[kinsman redeemer]

Didn’t someone have to be on the Internet before they could log on?
Didn’t somebody have to create that account so they could log on?
Was that person already logged onto the Internet when they created that account?
Which came first - the Internet or the login?

Am I logged on?

[Leep]

I remember the transition from BBS and the internet being like an exclusive club and the invasion of the bohunk WebTvers.
Would have been mid-to late 90’s.
I remember because I was one...:)