This Day in History: The first-ever computer-to-computer link was established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet on this day in 1969. There is a persistent myth out there that government invented the internet, ergo, government is helpful and we need it. The government was interested in a network of computers talking to each other and it used funding to support that research. The the private sector was also interested in the same thing. In other words, we would have had an internet with or without the government, and perhaps sooner, as the government locked access to the internet until the 90's. Now think of all the components needed for the internet to work. Where did that come from?:
"IBM and ATT had major labs and were vitally interested in computers talking to one another as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bell Labs invented UNIX in 1969; it made the internet possible. IBM invented FORTRAN and hard drives in 1956. Bell transmitted packet data over lines in 1958. Texas Instruments invented integrated circuits in 1958. In 1961 Leonard Kleinrock published a paper on packet switching networks. Bell Labs made the first modem in 1961. The mouse was invented in 1963. Digital Equipment Corporation produced the first minicomputer in 1964. In 1965 time sharing at MIT and mail command started. Intel began in 1968. The year 1966 saw the first use of fiber optics to carry telephone signals."~Michael S. Rozeff
"If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks. 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."
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