🌐 How the Internet Was Born

What you’ll learn

1. Packet Switching and ARPANETUnderstand packet switching, the people who conceived it, and how ARPANET became the first working network.The internet rests on packet switching, breaking messages into independently routed chunks, conceived by Baran, Davies, and Kleinrock. ARPA funded ARPANET, which connected its first four university nodes in 1969 and sent its first message, the accidental 'LO', that October. This decentralized design gave the internet its enduring resilience.
2. TCP/IP and InternetworkingExplain the internetworking problem and how Cerf and Kahn's open TCP/IP protocols solved it.As multiple packet networks arose, the challenge became connecting different networks into a network of networks. Cerf and Kahn designed TCP/IP, a common open language for routing and reliable delivery, adopted by ARPANET on January 1, 1983. Making the protocols open and free let the internet grow as a permissionless commons anyone could build on.
3. Email and the Early NetTrace email's accidental rise and the communities and networks of the pre-Web internet.Ray Tomlinson's 1971 email, using the at sign, quickly dominated ARPANET traffic, proving the network's real value was human connection. Mailing lists, Usenet, and bulletin boards built early online communities and culture. Through the 1980s TCP/IP merged networks, NSFNET became the backbone, and ARPANET was retired in 1990.
4. The Web Is BornDistinguish the Web from the internet and understand Berners-Lee's invention at CERN.The Web is an application on top of the internet, invented by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN around 1989 to solve document sharing. He created HTML, HTTP, and the URL and built the first browser and server, launching the first website in 1991. CERN's 1993 release of the Web into the public domain let it spread freely and conquer the world.
5. Browsers, Search, and Who Runs ItFollow how browsers, search, social, and mobile made the Web a mass medium, and learn who governs the internet and the hardware it runs on.The 1993 Mosaic browser and then Netscape opened the Web to ordinary people, and standards bodies kept it open through the browser wars. Google's link-based ranking made the exploding Web searchable. Social media in the 2000s turned users into publishers, and the 2007 iPhone made the internet mobile, always-on, and personal. No single entity controls the internet: bodies like the IETF and ICANN coordinate open standards, and physically it lives on undersea fiber cables and data centers.

Questions this course answers

Grounded in trusted sources

• Computer History Museum
• Internet Society
• CERN
• Encyclopaedia Britannica

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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