Some Contributors
During World War II, Vannevar Bush facilitated a relationship between the federal government, the American scientific community, and business. After the war, he helped institutionalize that relationship. As a result, organizations like the National Science Foundation and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), were created. It was at ARPA that the Internet first began. Bush also wrote a paper entitled, "As We May Think," in 1945. In this paper he described a theoretical storage and retrieval device, called a "memex," which would use a system remarkably similar to what we now call hypertext
The Advanced Research Projects Agency was created by President Dwight Eisenhower after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in October, 1957. The Soviet launch caused a crisis in American confidence. ARPA was formed to ensure that America would not again be caught off guard on the technological frontier. In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider went to work for ARPA. Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist, believed that computers could be used to augment human thinking and suggested that a computer network be established to allow ARPA research contractors to communicate information with each other efficiently. Licklider did not actually build his proposed network, but his idea lived on when he left ARPA in 1964.
The architecture of the ARPANET relied heavily on the ideas of Paul Baran who co-invented a new system known as packet-switching.( A British computer scientist, Donald Davies, independently came up with his own theories of packet-switching). Baran also suggested that the network be designed as a distributed network. This design, which included a high level of redundancy, would make the network more robust in the case of a nuclear attack. This is probably where the myth that the Internet was created as a communications network for the event of a nuclear war comes from. As a distributed network the ARPANET definitely was robust, and possibly could have withstood a nuclear attack, but the chief goal of its creators was to facilitate normal communications between researchers.
The inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com Corporation. In 1973 Bob Metcalfe and D.R. Boggs invented Ethernet, the local area networking (LAN) technology that turns PCs into communication tools by linking them together. In 1976 Metcalfe and Boggs published a paper titled, "Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching for Local Computer Networks." The invention of Ethernet preceded the personal computer, yet it was a breakthrough in computer networking that would eventually tie together 50 million PCs worldwide. In addition to defining the physical media and connections, Ethernet defined how data is transmitted across a local area network (LAN) at 10 megabits per second. Ethernet allows PCs and workstations from different manufacturers to communicate by using agreed-upon standards for sending packets. Of his experiences at PARC, Metcalfe said, "I was given all the equipment I would ever need to do my work. Best of all, I got to work with other geniuses."
Vinton Cerf is senior vice president of Internet Architecture and Technology for WorldCom. Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol, the communications protocol that gave birth to the Internet and which is commonly used today. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his partner, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. He is referred to by many as the "Father of the Internet.
In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. Based on some earlier work, it was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd", and the first client, "WorldWideWeb" a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. This work was started in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of 1991.
Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the design of the Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles as the Web technology spread.
In 1994, Tim founded the World Wide Web Consortium at the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since that time he has served as the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium which coordinates Web development worldwide, with teams at MIT, at INRIA in France, and at Keio University in Japan. The Consortium takes as its goal to lead the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage.
Mark Andreesen developed the first Internet browser, Mosaic, and then led the team that created Netscape navigator. Andreessen developed the idea for the Mosaic graphical user interface in the fall of 1992 while he was an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois and a staff member at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Champaign, Illinois. He created the friendly, easy-to-use navigational tool for the Internet with a team of students and staff at NCSA in early 1993. In his role at Mosaic Communications, Marc sets and oversees the technical direction of the company. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in 1993.