Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web

Partial map of the Internet based on the Jan. 15, 2005, data found on opte.org. Each line is

drawn between two nodes, representing two IP addresses. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. Credit: Creative Commons | The Opte Project Credit for the initial concept that developed into the World Wide Web is typically given to Leonard Kleinrock. In 1961, he wrote about ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, in a paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." Kleinrock, along with other innnovators such as J.C.R. Licklider, the first director of the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), provided the backbone for the ubiquitous stream of emails, media, Facebook postings and tweets that are now shared online every day. Here, then, is a brief history of the Internet: The precursor to the Internet was jumpstarted in the early days of computing history, in 1969 with the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPA-funded researchers developed many of the protocols used for Internet communication today. This timeline offers a brief history of the Internet’s evolution: 1965: Two computers at MIT Lincoln Lab communicate with one another using packet-switching technology.