THE INTERFACE MESSAGE PROCESSOR Physicist and computer designer Wesley Clark first proposed the interface message processor IMP IMPs would be minicomputers designed to handle the connection of computers to Advanced Research Projects Agency Network ARPANET They would provide an interface between their home computer and distant computers All IMPs would use a single consistent software program rather than needing a separate program to connect each computer In December 1968 the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency ARPA awarded the contract to design the IMP to Bolt Baranek and Newman based in Cambridge Massachusetts Seated at the UCLA computer was Charley Kline an undergraduate student Kline's job was to type the first message to be sent over the brand new Internet the command LOGIN First Kline got on the telephone with his counterpart at Stanford Then he typed the letter L Over the phone Kline asked Have you got the L The Stanford colleague replied Got the L Then Kline typed the O Have you got the O Got the 0 Then he typed the G and the Stanford system crashed By accident the first message sent over the Internet was LO On the next attempt the word LOGIN arrived safely Kleinrock later described this event as the day the infant Internet uttered its first words Of course at that point the Internet was so new it did not yet have a name Many exciting things happened in 1969 but to most people the event that surpassed all others was the July 20 Apollo 11 moon landing At the time most technology buffs thought this would be the decade's supreme moment the moment that would define the future But it was the event almost no one noticed when two computers several hundred
miles apart first talked to each other that would more profoundly change the way humans live Life before the Internet Consider a teen living in 1969 It is Monday morning and she has not talked with her best friend since Friday Last night her boyfriend called and they talked for five minutes before her mother made her hang up The phone is on the wall in the hallway near the living room where the family is often watching television She has little privacy She really wants to talk with her friend about her phone conversation Would her boyfriend ask her to the prom Would her mother take her shopping to buy a new dress Plus she is worried about her term paper She has to go to the public library to do research if any books are available How wonderful she thought if she could talk with her friends privately anytime she wanted do her research and maybe even buy her dress without all this hassle LEONARD KLEINROCK Dr Leonard Kleinrock received his PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT in 1963 He has spent the last 50 years at UCLA as a distinguished professor of computer science Kleinrock has received many honors for his leadership in founding the Internet In 2007 he received the National Medal of Science the highest science honor in the United States Dr Kleinrock is now working on smart spaces whereby he says cyberspace comes out from behind the screen and moves out into your physical space so that there will be intelligence and embedded technology in the walls of your room in your desk in your fingernails
Teenagers can do homework and research on tablet computers they carry in their backpacks Thanks to the Internet teenagers in the year 2015 and beyond are constantly connected not only to friends and family but also to people and information worldwide They can store much of their lives in the cloud to be retrieved by anyone at any time They can take a photo and send it to friends order a pizza download music and movies find a location check the weather or watch a football game all with pocket sized smartphones But many technological advances occurred between those first steps in the 1960s and the Internet of today 10
TRACING THE INTERNET Technology writer Andrew Blum started with only a vague notion of the Internet To be online was to be disembodied reduced to eyes and fingertips he said There was the virtual world and the physical world cyberspace and real places and never the two shall meet Blum's view of the Internet changed radically when his own portion of it failed The technician sent to solve the problem tested electronic cables and switches and eventually he traced the problem outdoors to a squirrel chewing through the rubber coating on a wire which in turn was attached to a metal box on a pole Suddenly Blum realized the Internet did not exist in a cloud It consisted of physical structures cords wires and boxes all of which led somewhere The Internet is a vast electronic communication network that connects many smaller networks around the world In other words it is a global network connecting millions of computers in more than 100 countries But what exactly does the Internet consist of It is vastly more complex than its creators could have imagined People use it constantly but few stop to consider its components A teenager gets onto the Internet accesses a browser and pulls up his or her Instagram Where did the page come from How did it get from its source to the computer Where is it stored when no one is using it A girl sends a text to her mother who is on a business trip on the other side of the country How does the text travel from her cell phone to her mother's Out of millions of cell phones in that distant city how does the text pinpoint only her mother's phone
