5. 1973: The Ethernet Turns PCs into communication tools by linking them together
6. 1975: Production of the Altair 8800 The Altair 8800 revolutionized the way we communicate
7. Bill Gates forms Microsoft: 1975 An Empire is Born “I'm a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they're interested in.” - Bill Gates
In 1971, Ted Hoff, an engineer at Intel, was given the task of making a few different calculators for a Japanese company. Hoff decided that instead of making several different integrated circuits, it would be a better idea to create one single chip that was capable of doing all the jobs, depending on the instructions it was given. During the development of this chip, Intel realized what they had in the grasp of their hands: a programmable, general-purpose computer with the power of machines, which in the 1960s, had taken up entire rooms. Intel then made a deal with the calculator company. Intel kept the rights to sell the chip, and released it publicly soon after. The Intel 4004 was extremely important to the evolution of the internet. The 4004, which packed 2,250 transistor switches into a chip the size of a small fingernail, began Intel’s transition into a processor-manufacturing giant. The latest Intel microprocessors aren’t much bigger than the 4004, but they contain around 300 million transistors, compared to the first model’s 2,250.Why the Intel 4400 is significant: The arrival of the Intel 4004 was the advent of the microcomputer, the revolution that would free computers from their huge, air-conditioned rooms; bringing them into our homes and offices, and even into our televisions and cars. The combination of memory and processor on a single chip reduces size and cost, and increases speed, continuing the evolution from vacuum tube to transistor to integrated circuit. The invention of the 4004 meant that programming intelligence into inanimate objects had now become possible.
Electronic mail had been sent through the Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology’s “Compatible Time-Sharing System” since around 1965. Ray Tomlinson’s vision was to enable users to send mail between computers that were not connected to a common network. By his own admission, it wasn’t a very tough job, taking him only six hours of spare time.Email is important to the evolution of the internet for apparent reasons. Email allows anyone in the world to have contact with others, as long as they have internet access. In today’s world, you can now email the president of the United States (president@whitehouse.gov) , or even the Pope, if you do so wish. If, for example, you were going to send an email to your cousin who lives in California, you would be sending a message to the server your computer is connected to. Your server then locates your cousin’s server, which finally finds your cousin and puts the message in his/her inbox. Why is the invention of email important? Email led to the dawning of an era of rapid communication. One of the reasons email has been such a big success is because it is a push technology. The person that sends the email writes it, then Post-Office-Protocol 3 and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol transmit it. All the recipient has to do is open his/her email program and click on the email to read it. Email requires minimum effort, which greatly supports its popularity. The use of email has greatly surpassed all other Internet applications since its creation 40 years ago.
If not for the threat of nuclear war, the Internet might not exist at all. The idea began towards the end of the 1960s, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, as a Cold War project to create a communications network that was insusceptible to nuclear attack. Having been successfully established between the Stanford Research Institute and the University of California- Los Angeles in 1969, ARPANET was publicly demonstrated in 1972 at the first International Conference of Computer Communication (ICCC). ARPA key movers included Robert Taylor and Leonard Kleinrock, who worked hard to develop a communications network. The idea of packet switching came from Leonard Kleinrock. Packet switching has received widespread acceptance since its introduction in 1972. In packet-switching protocols, each packet, or block of data, contains the information it needs to reach its destination- the sender’s computer address (IP), recipients IP address, and so on. Each packet is transmitted individually and can follow different routes, depending on network availability. Thanks to packet-switching, public networks have been constructed in most developed countries and many developing countries.ARPANET and packet-switching are important in the evolution of the internet because they laid the groundwork for modern internet. If it weren’t for ARPANET, there may have been very little advance in the Internet. ARPANET heralded the arrival of the Internet age and packet-based, digital communications systems.
In 1973 at the Xerox PARC Labs in Silicon Valley, electrical engineer Robert Metcalf was looking at ways of connecting Xerox’s new computers to a new laser printer and began to consider the possibilities of Ethernet’s potential.An Ethernet network involves special cabling which information can be carried between machines, a unique address for each connected device, and a standard protocol for all devices to use. Once connected, data packets can be sent between any device (called a node). These data packets, called frames, must be written in the same protocol and include the address of the sender and the recipient. An advantage of Ethernet is that nodes can be added to and removed from the network without having to modify the existing devices. Today, Ethernet is one of the most common Local Area Network protocols used in local networks, specifically in businesses across the world. Ethernet is important to the evolution of the Internet because it forms the backbone of essentially all computer network systems.Today, many home computers still use a fixed line that connects their computer via an Ethernet cable to their modem and then to their Internet service provider. Ethernet offers an easy, economical and practical way to move data quickly from one computer to another computer or device at high speeds. Ethernet cables not only made connecting a LAN (local area network) more simple, but increased the speed at which these computers can talk to one another.
The personal computer age reached a milestone when the Altair 8800 became available in 1975. The Altair 8800, from Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS) was first featured in the January 1975 edition of Popular Electronics magazine. Ed Roberts, president and owner of MITS, is the designer of the Altair 8800. The entire system is comprised of a case, a power supply, a front panel and a passive motherboard with expansion slots. All of the circuitry - the CPU and memory, are on cards which plug into the expansion slots, which MITS called the "Altair Bus". Why is the Altair 8800 important? Today the Altair is widely recognized as the spark that led to the microcomputer revolution. The Altair 8800 quickly became an industry standard. The Altair 8800 was popular among hobbyists -it grabbed the attention of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who saw potential for developing a user-friendly programming language for the memory-deficient Altair. Because of the Altair 8800, old companies like IBM and new ones such as Apple, tried to make their mark in technology world. The Altair led to fierce competition and successful collaboration among these companies. The Altair 8800, one of the earliest PCs, transformed into a crucial tool that has revolutionized the way we communicate, handle information, work, play and learn.
In 1975, Bill Gates wasted no time contacting MITS, the makers of the Altair, to tell them how he had written a computer language that was perfect for their machine. The demonstration of Gate’s computer language, BASIC, worked faultlessly. Gates and buddy Paul Allen joined MITS and created an informal partnership known as “Micro-Soft.” Without Microsoft, the PC world would be nothing like it is today. It was Microsoft that managed to finally make the PC a mainstream icon. While Microsoft did not invent the very first word processor, they have invented the world’s most successful one. Microsoft is important to the evolution of the Internet because it facilitated computer use among non-techies, and led to the exponential growth of personal computing.Much more important than the Office Suite of programs is the Windows Operating System in terms of everything from Microsoft’s revenue to cultural impact.As you can easily see, if it weren’t for Microsoft, our lives wouldn’t run the way they do today. Everything software-wise on the computer owes something to Microsoft for having paved the way for future programs.
In new media and computing technologies, one name is hard to forget: Apple. Innovations such as the iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, and a host of PCs, have secured Apple’s place as a leader in the technology world. Apple’s products appeal to users through usability and unique looks. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple in 1976. Why is Apple important in the evolution of the Internet? Apple computers have been a continuous source of innovation. Apple has helped to shape computing as we know it. Personal Data Assistants, the laptop, and graphical interface have all been promoted through Apple’s products. Apple has changed technology in countless ways. Apple has shown consumers that there are far better ways to interact with technology: touchscreen. In addition, Apple single-handedly rewrote the book on mobile application creation by encouraging outside developers to set new bars for what could be possible through mobile software.
TCP/IP is comprised of dozens of different protocols, but only a few are the main protocols that define the core operation of the suite. Of these key protocols, two are usually considered the most important. The Internet Protocol (IP) is the primary OSI network layer (layer three) protocol that provides addressing, datagram routing and other functions in an internetwork. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the primary transport layer (layer four) protocol, and is responsible for connection establishment and management and reliable data transport between software processes on devices.Because of the importance of these two protocols, their abbreviations have come to represent the entire suite: “TCP/IP”.The TCP/IP protocols were initially developed as part of the research network developed by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA or ARPA). Initially, this new network, called the ARPANET, was intended to use a number of protocols that had been adapted from existing technologies.Why is TCP/IP important? TCP/IP was developed to allow more hosts to be interconnected. With the properties of TCP/IP it became possible to interconnect networks - and build a network of networks- the Internet. The ability of TCP/IP to allow the interconnectivity of various platforms running different operating systems meant that these systems were able to share information. TCP/IP is important to the evolution of the internet because it delivers services that everyone needs, for example, file transfer, email, and remote logon.
Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs announced The Apple II in 1977. The Apple II became one of the most popular computers ever. Although it is an immense improvement over the Apple I, it contains the same processor and runs at the same speed. The Apple II features include a color display, eight internal expansion slots, and a case with a keyboard. The Apple II was one of the first computers with a color display, and it has the BASIC programming language built-in, so it is ready-to-run right out of the box. Numerous different expansion cards were made by Apple and other manufacturers to add to the Apple II's capabilities. These include: floppy disk controllers, memory expansion, PASCAL and CP/M emulator cards, processor accelerators, and video cards. How does the Apple II contribute to Internet history? The Apple II stands apart for making machines once only viewed as being useful for crunching numbers now part of our everyday lives and virtually everything we do. The Apple II was the driving force that pushed Apple to become a successful business. Wozniak's focus on using software and programming to eliminate the need for expensive hardware made the Apple II quite affordable, relative to competing machines. As a result of the Apple II, Apple created a robust third-party developer community that helped to quickly build a useful pool of consumer-friendly software. The Apple II gave Apple the push they needed to move things forward.
USENET is an early example of a client server where users dial in to a server with requests to forward certain newsgroup postings. USENET distributes online forums or newsgroups concerning any number of topics across the Internet, allowing users to submit messages to newsgroups and communicate electronically in an informal manner. Usenet first began as the creation of two Duke University graduate students, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis, in late 1979. Truscott and Ellis envisioned software that would not only allow messaging between their department members, but also connect them to other universities. At the time, collaboration between universities was limited to costly phone calls and periodic postal newsletters. Next, Truscott and Ellis shared their vision with Steve Bellovin, a student at the nearby University of North Carolina. With his assistance writing scripts, "netnews" was born, and DUKE and UNC became the first two Usenet hosts. The "netnews" software was compiled for formal distribution and renamed to "A News" by Steve Daniel and was made available to any interested system administrators at 1980's Usenix Conference. Why was USENET important? The cost-effective nature of communication via Usenet made its initial release very popular with Unix administrators and the network rapidly outgrew the modest capabilities of A News. "B News" was developed and distributed beginning in 1981. USENET helped paved the way for communication across networks. Today, USENET features a worldwide network of servers exchanging newsgroup articles. It has grown leaps and bounds from its beginning.