This 
            web site profiles ten individuals whose work has contributed significantly 
            to the development of the Internet. It is my master's project.
          This 
            site  is 
            not intended to be an exhaustive history, nor is it suggested that 
            these ten "pioneers" are the only individuals who have made meaningful 
            contributions. 
          Beginnings 
            
          During 
            World War II, a man named Vannevar Bush 
facilitated 
            a relationship between the federal government, the American scientific 
            community, and business. After the war, he helped institutionalize 
            that relationship. As a result, organizations like the National Science 
            Foundation and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), were created. 
            It was at ARPA that the Internet first began. Bush also wrote a paper 
            entitled, "As 
            We May Think," in 1945. In this paper he described a theoretical 
            storage and retrieval device, called a "memex," which would use a 
            system remarkably similar to what we now call hypertext. 
          ARPANET 
            
          The 
            Advanced Research Projects Agency was created by President Dwight 
            Eisenhower after the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite in October, 
            1957. The Soviet launch caused a crisis in American confidence. ARPA 
            was formed to ensure that America would not again be caught off guard 
            on the technological frontier. In 1962, J.C.R. 
            Licklid
er 
            went to work for ARPA. Licklider, a psychologist and computer scientist, 
            believed that computers could be used to augment human thinking and 
            suggested that a computer network be established to allow ARPA research 
            contractors to communicate information with each other efficiently. 
            Licklider did not actually build his proposed network, but his idea 
            lived on when he left ARPA in 1964. 
          Bob 
            Taylor, who was the director of ARPA's Information Processing Techniques 
            Office (IPTO) from 1966-1969, wanted to find an effici
ent 
            way to allow various IPTO contractors to share computing resources. 
            He picked up on Licklider's old idea of a network and hired Larry 
            Roberts to head the project. Roberts would be the main architect 
            of a new computer network that would be known as the ARPANET. Thus 
            the beginnings of the Internet were underway. 
           
          The 
            architecture of the ARPANET relied heavil
y 
            on the ideas of Paul Baran who co-invented 
            a new system known as packet-switching.( A British computer scientist, 
            Donald Davies, independently came up with his own theories of packet-switching). 
            Baran also suggested that the network be designed as a distributed 
            network. This design, which included a high level of redundancy, would 
            make the network more robust in the case of a nuclear attack. This 
            is probably where the myth that the Internet was created as a communications 
            network for the event of a nuclear war comes from. As a distributed 
            network the ARPANET definitely was robust, and possibly could have 
            withstood a nuclear attack, but the chief goal of its creators was 
            to facilitate normal communications between researchers. 
          The 
            ARPANET connected large mainframe computers together via smaller gateway 
            computers, or routers, known as Interface Message Processors (IMPs). 
            On September 1, 1969, the first IMP arrived at UCLA. A month later 
            the second one was installed at Stanford. The UC Santa Barbara and 
            then the University of Utah. 
          A 
            True Internet 
          The 
            ARPANET continued to grow. Networking technology continued to 
develop 
            as people like Bob Metcalfe, who invented 
            Ethernet, and Douglas Engelbart, inventor 
            of the mouse among o
ther 
            things, pushed the technology's envelope. Other computer networks, 
            like Hawaii's ALOHANET and the satellite linked network SATNET, began 
            to spring up. Soon the were many  different 
            computer networks all over the world, but th
ey 
            could not communicate with one another because they used different 
            protocols, or standards for transmitting data. Then in 1974, Vint 
            Cerf (known to some as the "father of the Internet"), along with 
            Bob Kahn, wrote a new protocol, TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, 
            that would become the accepted standard. The implementation of TCP 
            allowed the various networks to connect into a true "internet." 
          The 
            Internet became widely popular in the computer and scientific research 
            communities. By the 1980's most universities and research-oriented 
            institutions had computers that were connected to the Internet. 
          The 
            World Wide Web 
          
In 
            the 1970's, Ted Nelson coined the term "hypertext," 
            to describe a
 
            system for nonlinear linking of documents directly inspired by the 
            works of Vannevar Bush. Using hypertext, Tim Berners-Lee 
            created a new way of interacting with the Internet in 1990-the World 
            Wide Web. His system made it much easier to share and find data on 
            the Internet. The World Wide Web was further augm
ented 
            by others who created new software and technologies to make it more 
            functional. For instance, Marc Andreesen 
            created a new browser called Mosaic and then led the team that created 
            Netscape navigator. 
          The 
            World Wide Web led to widespread popularity for the Internet. Today 
            the web continues to grow and change in sometimes unpredictable ways. 
            
           
          *New 
            list of suggested books for further reading.*
           
          
           
           
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