The Internet is a wonderful place. It’s a place where people can talk with each other from across the globe, a place where we can watch the newest tv shows or a place where we can find the newest items to purchase. People often think the words “Internet” and “World Wide Web” are the same. However, they have different meanings.
If the Internet is a city with lots of streets, roads and highways, then the Web is the nice driver that takes you around the city. If the Internet is the ocean, then the web is a massive fleet of ships and submarines, taking people through the ocean.
The Internet is a series of computer networks that allows many computers to connect and communicate from anywhere in the world. So how did the Internet really get started? Believe it or not, it all began with a satellite.
In 1957, the Soviet Union (modern-day Russia) launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. At the time, the Soviet Union and the Americans considered one another as enemies, so Sputnik greatly shocked the Americans. As a response, the Americans created a group to research computer science technology and compete with the Soviets. This group was called the Advanced Research Projects Agency ( ARPRA).
In the 1950’s, computers were enormous and filled entire rooms. The ARPRA began working on ways to network four computers to communicate with one another. They called this network ARPANET.
By 1970, engineers and technicians began connecting ARPANET to other networks, which led to the name Internet. Without, ARPANET, the Internet wouldn’t look or do what it does today, let alone exist!
Even though the Internet was created, the only people who really used it were the government, military people and computer scientists. In 1990, physicist Tim Berners-Lee wanted to share information with other physicists around the world, but found that there was no quick solution to do that. He wanted to create a central location that linked to other information.
As a result, the World Wide Web was created. The Web became a way to navigate the big collection of digital pages on the Internet. By 1994, everybody was using the web for school and business. Today, there are over 65 million web pages!
The Internet is more complex and continues to grow to this day. It connects not only computers and cell phones but also people from all over the world. To think, we owe all of this to a silver beeping ball that once orbited space!
Exercise
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