The Internet Story

The Greatest Gift to Mankind! 
 

- Shreya Bhattacharya

The life savior of our generation, the messiah for the corporates and the necessity of today’s life - we are talking about internet. The greatest gift to mankind ever came not as a circle (read wheel) but in waves aka internet. So, when was it born? Who invented it? How did it evolve for the betterment of mankind?

Unlike most of the technologies including a light bulb, the Internet wasn’t invented by any single “inventor.” Instead, it evolved over time and eventually became internet as we know it today.

Accept this, we are dependent on the Internet for anything and everything today, and for people like me, it’s simply impossible to imagine a life without the same.

HOW INTERNET IDEA WAS BORN: THE SPUTNIK SCARE

On October 4, 1957, the (then) Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite into orbit – Sputnik, which didn’t do much! It wandered aimlessly in the outer space, beeping and bleeping from its radio transmitters as it circled the Earth. Still, many Americans felt it was something alarming: While US was busy in designing bigger cars and better TVs, it seemed the Soviets had been focusing on less frivolous things—and they were going to win the Cold War because of it. After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more seriously about science and technology. Schools added courses on subjects like chemistry, physics and calculus. Corporations took government grants and invested them in scientific research and development

ARPANET: WHAT’S THAT?

In 1962, a scientist from M.I.T. and ARPA named J.C.R. Licklider proposed a solution to this so called problem of a possible attack by the Soviets… a “galactic network” of computers that could be interconnected.