The History of the Internet

Many people think that the Internet is a recent innovation, when in fact the essence of it has been around for over a quarter century. The Internet began as ARPAnet, a U.S. Department of Defense project to create a nationwide computer network that would continue to function even if a large portion of it were destroyed in a nuclear war or natural disaster.

During the next two decades, the network that evolved was used primarily by academic institutions, scientists and the government for research and communications. The appeal of the Internet to these bodies was obvious, as it allowed disparate institutions to connect to each others' computing systems and databases, as well as share data via E-mail.

The nature of the Internet changed abruptly in 1992, when the U.S. government began pulling out of network management, and commercial entities offered Internet access to the general public for the first time. This change in focus marked the beginning of the Internet's astonishing expansion.

According to a survey conducted by CommerceNet and Nielsen Media Research in early 1997, nearly one out of every four Americans over the age of 16 is an Internet user. And the number of users worldwide is believed to be well into the tens of millions. Other statistics are equally startling:

A CNN report stated that Internet traffic in 1996 was 25 times what it was just two years earlier. The market research group IntelliQuest pegged the number of Internet users in the U.S. in late 1996 at 47 million - a 34 percent increase over the first quarter of that year. According to IBM, 146 countries currently have at least some level of Internet access. The technology research firm IDG estimates that by century's end, one billion people worldwide will have access to personal computers—more than doubling the computer-savvy population of 1996. The Internet explosion coincides with the advent of increasingly powerful yet reasonably priced personal computers with easy-to-use graphical operating systems. The result has been an attraction of recent computer "converts" to the network, and new possibilities for exploiting a wealth of multimedia capabilities.
For further details on the Internet's history, go to http://www.internetvalley.com/intval.html