Lecture 3 - History of the Internet

Today's lecture was covering the Internet and it's history. Before the concept of the Internet was even thought of, Charles Babbage started looking to develop the calculator. With the help of his close friend, Ada Byron who was the first computer programmer, they came up with ideas of how to get the abacus calculator to work. This was the first example of a machine that could count. We also discussed Gordon Moore, who developed Moore's Law which states that microchips capacities will double every two years. This concept has obviously changed somewhat with the rapid development of technology and computers becoming more advanced. Computers were first commercially produced in the 1950's by IBM.

Xerox PARC developed the mouse concept as well as the pull down menus and the GUI (Graphical User Interface). In 1975 the first PC, called O, was released to the public. BASIC for Altair was developed by Bill Gates which were languages for basic accounting, some games and word processor. He then started the company Microsoft in his garage. We then discussed the development of Apple and it's role in the progressiveness of computers. Apple was developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and the first primitive Apple computer was sold for just $666.60. Apple continued to battle with IBM and Microsoft for control over the industry, initially with great success but they soon hit a down fall with Steve Jobs leaving the company. His return years later prompted Apples rise to success once again and there they still remain.

The Internet is a network of interconnecting computers, a network of networks. which was started by the RAND corporation who came up with the idea initially to transfer academic material from one source (computer) to another. This was the reason why Internet was needed.

We then watched a movie on YouTube called "Warriors of the net" which was very entertaining. It just animated what happens when packets of information are transferred from one computer to the next. The steps of the Internet process were explained in a simplistic way which made the broad picture easier to understand.

Early Internet applications were also touched on, mentioning the E-mail, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and the IRC (Internet Relay Chat).