No phenomenon beats the internet when it comes to the growth in influence on the human race. In the United States of America alone, there are more than seven thousand internet service provision brands such as Xfinity Internet. On a global scale, approximately five billion people use the internet. If you divide that figure by the total population of the world, you will be able to find out that two out of three citizens of the world use the increasingly influential global network called the internet.
Without a doubt, with an increase in influence comes an increase in questioning. The same is happening with the internet as many people indulge in discussions about it. While many wonder about the negative consequences the internet will have on children, others like to discuss which internet service provider offers the fastest internet. Some even discuss who created the internet. If you are one of the latter, be grateful that you landed here. We say this not because we are arrogant about our piece; we just know we will be discussing the entities that contributed to the creation of the internet in the following paragraphs.
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ARPANET
Whenever we are discussing what created a certain phenomenon, we must take into consideration if that phenomenon succeeded another phenomenon. In the case of the internet, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) is widely considered to be the forerunner. You might have guessed from the name but the Advanced Research Projects Agency created it.
Any guesses on what that was? It was not any technological department governed by the entire world; rather it was an arm of the military of a single country – the United States of America. You might be wondering why the military wanted to build the ARPANET. Well, they were looking for a place to store their data that could not be bombarded by the Soviets, The best solution was to have the data stored over a network that spanned many territories.
Note that although the ARPANET was created by the Department of Defense, its purpose was never restricted to the military. In fact, many key network developers, such as Joseph Licklider and Robert Taylor, wanted global communities to form. Don't believe us? Read the main work of the aforementioned scientists: The Computer as a Communication Device.
Internet Protocol
Although it would be wrong to credit the creation of the internet to one single entity, if we had to pick one individual, it would be Vinton Cerf. This is because he invented the Internet Protocol (IP) which allowed computers around the globe to communicate with one another in a virtual space. The IP was launched on 1st January 1983. That date is now considered the birth date of the internet. Thus, whenever you are celebrating the New Year, remember to celebrate the birthday of the phenomenon that lets you share pictures of your New Year celebrations with the rest of the world.
World Wide Web
Not everything related to the internet can be related to the Department of Defense. In fact, the most widely used application of the internet – the World Wide Web - was created by a British by the name of Sir Tim Berners Lee. By laying the foundations for HTML linking, Sir Tim allowed web pages to connect with one another. All the connections made between the web pages then gave birth to a web of shared knowledge called the World Wide Web.
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Search Engines
Although when we think of the term “search engine” the first entity that comes to mind is Google, it is important to note that there were search engines before Google as well. In fact, the first search engine was invented by a software developer at a technology company called Nexor. The name of the developer is Martijn Koster and the name of the search engine he founded is Aliweb. All this happened in the early 1990s.
However, we have to give credit where credit is due. The truth is, Google completely changed what we thought of as search engines when it founded its own engine in 1998. Today, Google has indexed well over 50 billion web pages.
Conclusion
As detailed above, many entities contributed to what is known as the internet of today. If we were to give a verdict stating the most significant creator, we fear that would serve as an injustice towards the other great scientists who worked on molding the internet into a better version of itself.
