Arpanet

The precursor to the Internet was a network called the ARPANET project.

Here's how it started: Connecting computers across a wide distance was demonstrated in 1966 to the Applied Research Project Agency (ARPA). Developers wanted to create a wide network that could connect the private corporations and universities to each other. This would allow greater collaboration between facilities and researchers.

The first application of ARPANET as a network of computers was used to allow the sharing of processor time on the limited number of computers that were available. The idle processor time could be shared with researchers over a vast distance. This worked well but was only the tip of the iceberg of capability of the network.

Examining the capabilities of the ARPANET system, with hindsight it is easy to see the future capabilities and easy to understand that this was the precursor to the Internet. This preliminary work all occurred in 1966.

The growth of users on the ARPANET was exponential. In 1974, there were 62 computers connected together. The growth continued rapidly and 111 computers were connected by the end of 1977. Starting in 1983, ARPANET started to divide into networks which were more geared to the needs of their users:

• In 1983, MILNET- the military network that had been one of the first users- separated from ARPANET for security reasons, but continued to connect military installations for non-classified information.
• In 1985, most universities were shifted from ARPANET to the new NSFnet. This facilitated communication among researchers at various universities.

In 1985, the ARPNET network branched to networks outside of North America and spread to Europe and Australia. The first declaration that this network had become the Internet was in 1990. At that point, there were 300,000 computers connected and ARPANET was officially disbanded.