For further reading Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Brief History of the Internet If I have seen further, it is because I stood on the shoulder of giants Isaac Newton (1643-1727) The internet is a product of the sum of human knowledge aggregated over many centuries. When the mythological Arachne spun her fine tapestries nymphs come out of the forest to admire her work. Aside from mythology the earliest invention related to the internet could be the abacus. The 3,000 year old abacus has still its use today and even found to be faster than  some electronic calculators.   In 1820's Charles Babbage  started working on his analytical machine which is truly the predecessor of the modern computer.  Although this monolithic machine hasn't been realized, the idea persisted.  In the early 1940's the leading nations had some kind of computer technology.   One morning in 1947, at the Naval Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia the Harvard Mark II computer suddenly shut down. While investigating the engineers found a moth stuck between the relays. They removed the bug and called the process debugging.  So the first computer bug was a real, live bug. In 1983, Grace Murray Hopper, the naval officer who found the bug,  became the first woman to achieve the rank of rear admiral in the United States Navy. She was the co-inventor of the Mark II computer. The bug achieved honorary rank and is placed at the National Museum of American History. Prompted by fear of nuclear holocaust, in 1958 the DoD ( Department of Defense ) issued a directive to establish a communication infrastructure which will withstand nuclear disaster.  The project was named DARPA . Later it included universities and other civilian sector and was renamed ARPA ( Advanced Research Projects Agency ). ARPA morphed again to be renamed ARPANET. The new era dawned finally. The link to ARPANET has very interesting pictures, I recommend you look at it. Among interesting images there is the first email sent from UCLA to SRI ( both in California ). The computers shut down after transmitting a single email. In 1976, The two Steve's made desktop a reality when they showcased the Apple I computer. Steve Wozniak was the real inventor of Apple I. But his invention would have never seen the light if it hadn't been for his business savvy partner - Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs extended the vision to include additional novelties like Apple II and MAC. Which is still a leader in graphics. In 1970's Paul Allen together with a skinny drop out named Bill Gates started exploring the desktop industry which was dominated by Apple.  They realized their dream by convincing IBM to hire their service.  Unfortunately they didn't have an operating system. They bought DOS ( disk operating system ) from a programmer who was short on dough ( street word for money). The contribution of these band of programmers ( later known as Microsoft ) is in commercially reaching the masses.  Mass production of computers required a protocol that will let them communicate. This protocol was realized in 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee invented the web and its protocol http ( hypertext transfer protocol ). It was a convention of recognizing computers via anchor links. The world wide web was truly the invention of this single individual who fought since then to keep it nonproprietary and free. This is  what enabled us to telecommute from China to New York and buy and sell on eBay across continents. It is a giant money sucking machine which pervades every part of our life. The W3C is still the leader in recommending to industry protocols such as HTML, XML, XHTML and various others. We will be discussing the recommendations of W3C in detail in this thread Belay Fabius  Page 1