The Internet is undoubtedly one of those inventions that have fundamentally transformed the world. It is even difficult to imagine reality without it. It is all the more strange that its beginnings date back only to the 1960s. They form a whole series of events that have made it possible for us to participate in the global network today. How did it happen?
It is commonly believed that the origins of the Internet should be sought in research conducted by the United States Army. It is speculated that they wanted to build a computer network that could continue to exist despite being partially destroyed. This work is directly linked to the activities of the RAND Corporation think tank. For some time, however, it has been argued that the origins of the Internet were purely civilian. The idea was to allow seamless communication with other research institutions despite long distances
ARPANET was the direct predecessor of the Internet, a network commissioned by the U.S. Army and discontinued in 1990. The idea of creating such a network emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the U.S. Department of Defense funded an experimental network between two computers (1966). The success of the project led to the search for a network that could be used during wartime. This network was supposed to function even with large infrastructure damage caused by nuclear attacks. The network created at American universities began to grow gradually.
It was not until 1971, i.e. two years after the first message was sent (the first e-mail), that universities were allowed to officially connect their academic networks to ARPANET. The initiative was secret until then. They began to use the phrase ”Internet”, meaning a network connecting other networks. After several hacker intrusions, it was decided to separate the network into civilian and military parts. The former was shut down in 1990.
ARPANET was not very egalitarian and it was difficult to spread it. An important event was the creation of the Usenet newsgroup system. Thanks to them, the network began to better mediate real communication between people. In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the use of databases and an information system based on WWW hyperlinks
Although web pages were already appearing, the spread of the Internet required that they be easier to find. The era of web browsers began. The 1993 W3Catalog was a primitive solution, but much more sophisticated solutions soon followed. The first of these was Lycos in 1995. In 1998, the first version of Google appeared
What is the history of the Internet in our country? Of course, it is much shorter and counts about 30 years. At the time when the world was divided into two blocks, it was difficult to even think about the emergence of such technology in Poland.
It first appeared in Poland for scientific purposes – the Institute of Physics of the University of Warsaw was given access and the first e-mail was sent from Hoża Street in Warsaw. However, the use of the network in the following years was small. Only a few state institutions and private companies had access
The breakthrough came when Telekomunikacja Polska offered communication via modem. This service was introduced in 1996. It became popular over the next few years, but the barrier was still the very high cost of access. For three minutes one had to pay 29 gr. Hence, those times were the golden era of the now forgotten service in the form of Internet cafes. However, we had to wait a few years for the prices to come down. Only then did the number of Internet access points increase significantly in our country.
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