This is a free piece at The Journal, so click through. Short, with some great facts.
Al Gore did so invent the Internet. He would never lie to us about something so important. /s
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But it was Algore, he said so.
But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.
The internet was already in place in the mid 1960's - and the earliest email was long since sent in 1958 - the bulk of that network built between AT&T 3B Unix computers given to colleges across the nation and AT&T central offices provided the backbone. I was able to send email between teletype systems on the AT&T networks (first in the mid 1950's) and later on systems that had been put on the very first 'ethernet' running from coast to coast, and DARPA was there too - testing between military installations. Prior to the advent of ethernet, it was still the first 'network' and email was in use on that network.
Yes, I can understand that graphical use of the internet at that time was a high priority, and that Xerox indeed became a major player in that later - but Xerox in no way invented the Internet - that had long been completed mostly by AT&T and many other early players including primarily the US federal government!
Thanks for posting this.
Vanavar Bush? Even if the government did invent it, a Bush being involved in it is irony at its sweetest.
I had heard it was Scientist and people in the Medical field. Am I wrong?
The father of a girl I dated in college, Col. Tate, if I remember correctly, was instrumental in helping to decentralize communications in case of war, nuclear or otherwise. He and I had a long talk in the early 80’s about why it was necessary and that the civilian component, Universities and Colleges at the time, were crucial to keeping it up in case one area was brought down. He had a lot of “inside” knowledge of how it worked and he even talked about how civilians may someday be the bulk of the users, but in time of war, it would belong to the military.
Later
Hmm.. Well, we reverse-engineered the transistor from the Roswell UFO crash, so who knows what else we recovered?
Maybe the basics for the internet, too.
I heard the sound of a phone modem the other day, can't remember where.My grandfather took me up to an entire floor of a building in Columbus, Ohio to a sea of punched card machines fluttering down in blurring stacks like the rain in Africa and the '55 Chevy Nomad was the fascinating development to me.
Later the Commodore 64 with the funny cassette pasting white letters on a black screen, a Sony Trinitron for a monitor.
Credit might be given George Orwell/Eric Blair for the telescreen, but as it was strictly government--IT FAILED.
fubo, fubare, fubavi, fubatus
Who cares who invented it. It’s just a series of tubes according to Arlin Spechter.