Who Invented The Term Internet
The term ‘Internet’ came onto the scene in 1970s when TCP/IP protocol was in the process of designing. Internet is short name of the actual term Internetworking. To find who invented this term and why we need to go back into the history.
The ARPANET
ARPANET was the first milestone towards the formation of the Internet we know today. ARPANET was invented as a result of US DoD’ s demand for a better military command-and-control system. The ARPANET was proposed by Wesley Clark (originally a similar ideas was presented by Paul Baran years ago) and was implemented by BBN in collaboration with ARPA. ARPANET was a packet-switched network which connected four computers initially. But with the success of public demonstration of this network ARPANET grew massively and spanned the US by connecting many academic institutes with the network.
The NSFNET
NSF (National Science Foundation) saw the growing influence of ARPA due to ARPANET. The ARPANET served only those institutes who were licensed under ARPA. So, NSF decided to build its own network which was later named NSFNET. Its hardware was similar to ARPANET but the software was slightly different. NSFNET was open to all institutes and soon it also became very popular.
Many other similar networks were also implemented during the era of 1970s.
Invention of TCP/IP and formation of Internet
With so many different networks something was needed to connect them with each other. So ARPA hired Robert E. Kahn and Vinton Cerf to find a solution. They found a solution which was named TCP/IP. TCP/IP was an internet protocol which could be sued to hide all the differences between the networks to unify them. This protocol was published in December, 1974 and was declared the official protocol to be used in all the networks.
As written in the historical books about internet that the first document which was submitted by Vinton Cerf along with his team containing the detailed report about TCP/IP protocol carries the first ‘attested’ name Internet which was used as short form to the word ‘internetworking’.
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