Posted on 07/23/2012 7:06:51 AM PDT by 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?
(Excerpt) Read more at professional.wsj.com ...
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Looks like it was good times. ;-)
Actually its more likely due to gaming than pornography and masturbation.
But it was Algore, he said so.
A great summary of the "All Hail Government" crowd mentality.
Mr. Taylor didn’t build that. The guy who charged him a toll for driving to work made that.
Sham-Wow was invented in the last 10 years.
It may still win as OS X.
I have a portrait of Tesla at my home
And there is a big statue of Tesla at Niagara Falls, I almways make my daughters bow their head at that statue when we go there - it annoys the heck out of them
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.
The internet was already in place in the mid 1960's - and the earliest email was long since sent in 1958 - the bulk of that network built between AT&T 3B Unix computers given to colleges across the nation and AT&T central offices provided the backbone. I was able to send email between teletype systems on the AT&T networks (first in the mid 1950's) and later on systems that had been put on the very first 'ethernet' running from coast to coast, and DARPA was there too - testing between military installations. Prior to the advent of ethernet, it was still the first 'network' and email was in use on that network.
Yes, I can understand that graphical use of the internet at that time was a high priority, and that Xerox indeed became a major player in that later - but Xerox in no way invented the Internet - that had long been completed mostly by AT&T and many other early players including primarily the US federal government!
Thanks for posting this.
I was lucky to work for AT&T beginning in 1965 - and the first 'legs' of the internet as we know it today was in fact built 'gratis' by AT&T between colleges an military installations - and AT&T facilities, on AT&T networks. I got to see some of the very first 'email' transmissions - between AT&T facilities.
The 'backbone' of the internet still rides on (85 percent of) AT&T cable and fiber - and is maintained by AT&T.
Good point.
It is private companies that run and manage the Internet now. Of course Obama and the UN want the UN to run it ( yeah run it into the ground). Government (socialism) can't run anything and look at the government schools and public housing projects as examples of how terrible government is. Also look at the low quality of healthcare in England etc where the government is running healthcare. Imagine the idiots running the DVM or government schools trying to find the high tech treatments to save our lives. for the most part capitalism (private companies) have been managing the Internet and healthcare in the U.S.A. When Obama and the UN take over these then of course they will ruin these things and take our freedom away . government(socialism) doesn't work.
In it's zeal to push the use of UNIX as a major mainframe OS, AT&T gave thousands of it's 3B mainframes to colleges across the country - and it was to these colleges, and AT&T facilities, and military bases that AT&T hooked together that became the first 'network' between computers.
When the government became involved and DARPANET used this network, and the first network communications became a reality. Simple text communication via 'email' became a part of that communication later. But prior to email sharing of major documents was the first BIG THING on that network.
I can tell you - you had to have special permission to get on the net - you got a 'terminal' - usually a mainframe computer. You were always 'logged on' in those days.
Konrad Zuse, a German engineer and world's first computer nerd, invented an amazing set of electromechanical relay computers in compete isolation in his mom's basement starting in 1936. Possibly because he had no friends it didn't really catch on. His Z3 computer in 1941 was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computing machine. Using 2,300 relays, the Z3 used floating point binary arithmetic and had a 22-bit word length. Because no one in the U.S. knew about it, it didn't have any influence on computer development here.
Possibly Hitler should go down in history as the Xerox of dictators. He had Einstein, the first computers, all the world's rocket scientists. He misplayed many of the cards he was dealt big time.
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