The Evolution That Changed the Age: Internet Development Over Time

The history of the internet begins with Leonard Kleinrock publishing his paper "Information Flow in Large Communication Networks" in 1961. This theory proposed that data could be transmitted over a network in small packets.

In 1965, the first experiment using packet-switching technology was conducted at MIT. In 1968, BBN received the ARPANET contract.

On October 29, 1969, UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, and University of Utah nodes were connected. The first message sent by student Charles Kline was "LO".

Ray Tomlinson introduced network email in 1972. TCP/IP protocols were accepted as internet standards in 1982. The Domain Name System (DNS) was launched in 1983, establishing extensions like .edu, .gov, and .com.

Tim Berners-Lee created HTML at CERN in 1990. The World Wide Web became public in 1991. The Mosaic browser in 1993, Yahoo! in 1994, Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist in 1995.

Google emerged in 1998. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, Twitter in 2006.

Edward Snowden revelations in 2013 brought privacy concerns to the forefront. Mobile internet dominance, 5G and satellite internet services like Starlink were developed.

As of January 2021, approximately 4.66 billion people — over half the world's population — had internet access.