Internet celebrates its 30th birthday
US: Internet, a revolutionary and cheap communications system that
has transformed the lives of billions of people across the world, turned
30 on Tuesday.
The computer network officially began its technological revolution
when it fully substituted previous networking systems on January 1 1983.
Known as “flag day”, it was the first time the US Department of
Defence (DoD)-commissioned Arpanet network fully switched to use of the
Internet protocol suite (IPS) communications system.
Using data “packet-switching”, the new method of linking computers
paved the way for the arrival of the World Wide Web.
“I don’t think that anybody making that switch on the day would have
realised the importance of what they were doing,” the Daily Telegraph
quoted Chris Edwards, an electronics correspondent for Engineering and
Technology magazine, as saying.
“But without it the internet and the World Wide Web as we know them
could not have happened.”
Commenting on the historic event’s impact on the world, Edwards said:
“The internet means there is nowhere and no one in the world you can’t
reach easily and cheaply.”
Based on designs by Welsh scientist Donald Davies, the Arpanet
network began as a military project in the late 1960s. It was developed
at prestigious American universities and research laboratories, such as
the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Stanford
Research Institute. Starting in 1973, work on the powerful and flexible
IPS and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) technology which would
change mass communications got under way.
The Hindu |