A History of the Early Internet
From a crashed login at UCLA in 1969 to the first Bitcoin block in 2009 — 59 moments that turned a research network into the place we all live now. Every entry links to its source.
In 1990, fewer than 1% of Americans had ever used the internet. By 2000 it was 43%, and by 2009 it was 71%. The web itself grew from one website in August 1991 to more than 238 million in 2009.
How fast the web grew
Websites in June of each year, log scale: 1 in 1991, 2,738 in 1994, 3.2 million in 1999, 238 million in 2009. Source: Internet Live Stats / Netcraft.
The timeline
- The 1960s
- October 29, 1969 · Networks
The first message crosses ARPANET
A UCLA student tries to send "LOGIN" to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute. The system crashes after two letters, so the first message ever sent between networked computers is "LO".
- The 1970s
- 1971 · Networks
Email gets its @
Ray Tomlinson sends the first email between two machines on ARPANET and picks the @ sign to separate the user from the host.
- July 4, 1971 · Culture
Project Gutenberg begins
Michael Hart types the Declaration of Independence into a mainframe at the University of Illinois and makes it available to everyone on the network — the first e-book library.
- December 1974 · Networks
The word "Internet" shows up
RFC 675, the TCP specification written by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine, uses "internet" as shorthand for internetworking.
- February 16, 1978 · Networks
The first bulletin board system
Ward Christensen and Randy Suess bring CBBS online in Chicago during a blizzard. Dial in with a modem, leave a message, wait for a reply.
- May 3, 1978 · Networks
The first spam
Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation sends an unsolicited product announcement to about 400 ARPANET users. People complain. It works anyway.
- The 1980s
- 1980 · Networks
Usenet opens for discussion
Duke grad students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis start Usenet, the threaded newsgroups that become the internet's first great message boards.
- August 12, 1981 · Computers
IBM releases the PC
The IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, goes on sale. Its open design makes "IBM-compatible" the standard for the next two decades.
- September 19, 1982 · Culture
:-) is born
Scott Fahlman suggests marking jokes with :-) on a Carnegie Mellon message board, so readers can tell when someone is kidding.
- January 1, 1983 · Networks
Flag day: ARPANET switches to TCP/IP
Every host on ARPANET moves to the TCP/IP protocols on the same day. Many historians call this the birth of the internet as we know it.
- November 1983 · Domains
The Domain Name System is designed
Paul Mockapetris publishes the first DNS specifications (RFC 882 and 883), so computers can be found by names instead of numbers.
- January 24, 1984 · Computers
The Macintosh goes on sale
Two days after its famous "1984" Super Bowl commercial, Apple releases the Macintosh with a mouse and a graphical desktop.
- January 1985 · Domains
.com and friends are created
The first generic top-level domains — .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net and .org — go into service.
- March 15, 1985 · Domains
symbolics.com: the first .com
Symbolics, a Massachusetts computer maker, registers the very first .com domain. By the end of 1985 there are only six.
- November 20, 1985 · Computers
Windows 1.0
Microsoft ships Windows 1.0, a graphical shell that runs on top of MS-DOS.
- April 23, 1987 · Domains
datacube.com becomes the 68th .com
Datacube Inc., an image-processing company in Massachusetts, registers datacube.com — the 68th .com domain ever registered.
- August 1988 · Networks
IRC starts chatting
Jarkko Oikarinen writes Internet Relay Chat in Finland. Real-time group chat rooms spread around the world within months.
- November 2, 1988 · Networks
The Morris worm
A program written by Cornell student Robert Tappan Morris spreads across the internet and slows thousands of machines — the first worm to make national news.
- March 1989 · The Web
A proposal at CERN
Tim Berners-Lee submits "Information Management: A Proposal" at CERN. His boss writes "Vague but exciting" on the cover.
- The 1990s
- 1990 · The Web
Archie, the first search engine
Alan Emtage and colleagues at McGill University build Archie to index files on public FTP servers.
- December 20, 1990 · The Web
The first web page goes live
At CERN, info.cern.ch serves the first page of the World Wide Web, explaining what the web is and how to use it.
- 1991 · Networks
Gopher burrows in
The University of Minnesota releases Gopher, a menu-driven way to browse documents that briefly rivals the web.
- August 6, 1991 · The Web
The web goes public
Berners-Lee posts a summary of the World Wide Web project to the alt.hypertext newsgroup, inviting anyone to join.
- 1993 · The Web
Mosaic puts pictures on the page
NCSA Mosaic shows images right next to text and runs on ordinary PCs and Macs. Web traffic explodes.
- April 30, 1993 · The Web
CERN gives the web away
CERN puts the World Wide Web software in the public domain, free for anyone to use and build on.
- July 5, 1993 · Culture
"Nobody knows you're a dog"
The New Yorker runs Peter Steiner's cartoon of a dog at a computer, still the most reprinted cartoon in the magazine's history.
- 1994 · The Web
Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web
Two Stanford grad students start a list of their favorite sites. They rename it Yahoo!.
- July 5, 1994 · The Web
Amazon is founded
Jeff Bezos founds the company in his Bellevue, Washington garage. It's briefly called Cadabra.
- October 1994 · The Web
Netscape
Mosaic Netscape 0.9 is released and quickly becomes the browser most people use.
- 1995 · The Web
JavaScript in ten days
Brendan Eich writes the first version of JavaScript at Netscape in about ten days.
- 1995 · Domains
Domains stop being free
After SAIC buys Network Solutions, the National Science Foundation lets it charge for domain registrations: $100 for two years. Until then, registering a .com cost nothing.
- August 1995 · The Web
Internet Explorer 1.0
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer as part of the Plus! add-on pack for Windows 95, and the browser wars begin.
- August 9, 1995 · The Web
Netscape's IPO
Netscape's stock nearly triples on its first day of trading. Many count it as the start of the dot-com boom.
- August 24, 1995 · Computers
Windows 95
Microsoft launches Windows 95 with the Start button and a Rolling Stones song. Stores open at midnight.
- September 3, 1995 · The Web
AuctionWeb (later eBay)
Pierre Omidyar launches AuctionWeb. One of the first things sold is a broken laser pointer.
- July 4, 1996 · The Web
Hotmail launches
Free web-based email you can check from any computer. It signs up millions of users within a year.
- November 1996 · The Web
ICQ: "Uh-oh!"
Israeli company Mirabilis releases ICQ, the first instant messenger most people ever used.
- May 1997 · The Web
AOL Instant Messenger
AIM arrives — buddy lists, away messages and screen names you will regret.
- September 15, 1997 · Domains
google.com is registered
Larry Page and Sergey Brin register google.com for their Stanford search project.
- September 4, 1998 · The Web
Google is founded
Google incorporates and moves into a garage in Menlo Park, California.
- September 18, 1998 · Domains
ICANN is created
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers takes over coordinating domain names and addresses.
- June 1, 1999 · The Web
Napster
Shawn Fanning releases Napster. Music sharing goes mainstream, and the record industry goes to court.
- The 2000s
- January 10, 2000 · The Web
AOL buys Time Warner
AOL announces a merger with Time Warner valued at about $165 billion, the peak of dot-com confidence.
- March 10, 2000 · The Web
The dot-com peak
The Nasdaq closes at a record high. Within two years it loses most of its value.
- January 15, 2001 · The Web
Wikipedia launches
Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch an encyclopedia anyone can edit.
- October 23, 2001 · Computers
The iPod
Apple introduces the iPod: "1,000 songs in your pocket."
- October 24, 2001 · The Web
The Wayback Machine opens
The Internet Archive opens the Wayback Machine to the public, so anyone can see old versions of websites.
- April 28, 2003 · The Web
The iTunes Store
Apple opens the iTunes Music Store with 99-cent songs.
- August 2003 · The Web
Myspace
Myspace launches. Top 8 friends become a source of real-life drama.
- February 4, 2004 · The Web
TheFacebook
Mark Zuckerberg launches TheFacebook for Harvard students.
- April 1, 2004 · The Web
Gmail
Google announces Gmail with a full gigabyte of storage on April Fools' Day. Many people think it's a joke.
- April 23, 2005 · The Web
"Me at the zoo"
YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploads the site's first video: 19 seconds about elephants' long trunks. (Same day of the year datacube.com was registered, 18 years later.)
- March 21, 2006 · The Web
The first tweet
Jack Dorsey posts "just setting up my twttr".
- October 9, 2006 · The Web
Google buys YouTube
Google agrees to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, 18 months after the first upload.
- January 9, 2007 · Computers
The iPhone is announced
Steve Jobs introduces "an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator" — all one device.
- July 10, 2008 · Computers
The App Store
Apple opens the App Store with about 500 apps.
- September 2, 2008 · The Web
Google Chrome
Google releases its own web browser.
- January 3, 2009 · Networks
Bitcoin's genesis block
Satoshi Nakamoto mines the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain.