Significant Moments in the History of the Internet

The internet now plays an important role in many people's everyday lives. We use it for many different tasks, from finding information to purchasing products online. Millions of people worldwide are now employed in the internet industry.

Below are some of the significant moments and firsts in the history of the internet.

The First Website

It is not easy to define what the first website was as it depends on the definition of a website. The first internet-like connection was used for what was called the ARPANET, which was a secure network used to communicate information by the American military in the 1960's. The first website, though, is credited to Tim Berners-Lee. He is considered to have invented the World Wide Web. In 1990, he and a colleague from CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) implemented the first successful communication between a hypertext transfer protocol client and a server via the internet.

The First E-commerce Site

The first website that payments could be made through was the Pizza Hut website when they introduced an order system in 1994. This made it possible for customers to order for deliveries through the website with the payment made online.

The Invention of Amazon

Amazon was founded in 1994. They were the first company to sell a product over the internet. Initially it was exclusively an online bookstore but has since expanded into many other areas, including music, DVD's and video games. Many have attempted to copy Amazon's business model since, with some more successful than others.

The Invention of eBay

eBay was founded in 1995. It began as a listing of a broken laser point sold by Pierre Omidyar, which to his surprise sold for $14.83. He was shocked that someone would pay this for something that he didn't want. This immediately gave him a brain wave to start an auction website where people could sell unwanted items with people bidding for it. He realised that items some people no longer wanted may be of use to others.

Social Networking

There have been many social networking sites over the years. The first was launched in 1997 and called Six Degrees. Users were able to create profiles and list their friends. At one point Six Degrees had millions of users but it was not successful as a business and closed in 2000. Other social networking sites began to appear all over the internet with Facebook the most successful to date.

Facebook was launched in 2004. It was founded by college roommates Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. It was initially only a way of students from Harvard keeping in touch with each other. Due to its success it was later expanded to other universities in the United States and was eventually opened to all members of the public aged over 13.

Search Engines

The first search engine of sorts was called Archie, which was established in 1990. Archie worked by logging in to FTP servers and making an index of files. Wanderer was the first web robot. Established in 1993, it returned results as a list. Later in the same year Excite became the first to analyse page content. WebCrawler in 1994 became the first search engine to capture the title and header of a page and Lycos was the first to rank based on relevancy. WebCrawler ad Lycos were the first search engines that are similar to what we consider a search engine today. Google was created in 1996 and uses a wide array of factors to list relevant websites to a users search.

Andrew Marshall (c)

For more Information About The Internet visit Know the Net, a not-for-profit website from Nominet.