A Brief History of the Internet
Every now and again clients ask me questions about the history of the internet.
The internet is such a big part of our lives now, and is so deeply integrated into everything we do, that people sometimes wonder where it came from and how it developed.
We have been in the web business since the late 1990s, and our company was incorporated in 2001, so we have seen quite a few changes.
My first experience of the internet was in 1993, when I was a research scientist at University College London. We downloaded some software called NIH Image from the servers at NIH (National Institutes of Health). I couldn’t believe we were connecting to computers in the USA from our location in London. Even though the software took quite a long time to download, it was like magic to me.
Nerds 2.0.1 – History Of The Internet (From 1998)
One very good source of information on the origins and development of the internet is a TV programme, which was first aired in 1998 called Nerds 2.0.1. This show was also know as The Glory of the Geeks.
I have embedded the three episodes from YouTube below if you would like to learn more about the history of the internet.
There are several interesting books about this topic, but seeing and hearing from the people who made it happen is fascinating and brings the whole thing to life.
There are several characters that you will recognise, and a large number that you won’t.
Nerds 2.0.1 – Part 1 – Networking the Nerds
The first part takes a little while to get going, with some content that seems pretty irrelevant now (and seemed irrelevant at the time. However, it moves on pretty quickly to the people who invented the internet (or the ARPANet as it was known at the time) and why they invented it. We hear about a search engine called Excite (you might not remember that one). And watch out near the end for the person who invented email addresses.
Nerds 2.0.1 – Part 2 – Connecting the Suits
This second episode is more about local area networks, with less focus on the history of the internet. They talk about SUN Microsystems, 3Com and Novell Netware, which were big deals back then, but nobody really remembers them these days.
Bill Gates and Microsoft are in there thought, and they talk about how difficult it was for them to make any headway in computer networking in the 1980s. If you were around in the mid-1990s you’ll also remember that they didn’t see the Internet coming either (more about that in Part 3).
Other things we learn about are the origins of Cisco Systems (still with us today), and John McAfee, of McAfee antivirus, also makes an appearance.
Nerds 2.0.1 – Part 3 – Wiring the World
Finally, the world wide web is introduced. Usually, when people talk about the internet they actually mean the world wide web, which is the www that used to be included when talking about any web address.
As they say in the film, “the world wide web turned a network for geeks into something that everyone could use”. Added to that was the development of the first internet browser, called Mosaic, which really did make the world wide web accessible to almost everyone.
A search engine of the time that’s talked about a lot in the documentary is Excite. After this show aired, Excite went bust in 2001. Interestingly, that’s the same year we were incorporated. Also, Google wasn’t really even a thing in those days, so you may be surprised that they aren’t mentioned at all.
However, we do hear about some internet companies that are still with us today. For example, Amazon (who only sold books at that time), and Motley Fool who still offer online advice about investments.
The documentary concludes by wondering if Microsoft’s Internet Explorer would beat Netscape Navigator in the battle of the browsers, before leaving us with the impression that Excite might be the future of internet search (which, of course, it wasn’t).