The Birth of the Internet
The internet’s history begins in the 1960s.
Just half a century ago, the circ.u.mstances that established the internet already started to fade into the mists of history. Many rumors and theories got jumbled together and now there is likely no one who can reveal the truth.
According to one theory, its genesis is said to have been the result of the American-Soviet s.p.a.ce Race.
At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States had the advantage over their arch-enemy, the Soviet Union. This was because the US had developed the world’s first atomic bomb and created the hydrogen bomb soon after, and so were the clear winners in terms of nuclear development. With the sheer number of nuclear warheads they possessed and their power, the United States was overwhelmingly superior.
However, on October 4, 1957 an incident that shocked the US occurred.
The launch of the Soviet man-made satellite Sputnik 1 succeeded.
The fact that there was technology powerful enough to launch an artificial satellite into orbit meant that there was technology that could shoot a nuclear missile from the USSR to the United States.
In the meantime, the United States, far from launching satellites, had not yet succeeded even in the development of a rocket that could fly satisfactorily.
In other words, it was at this time that Americans realized that they had no countermeasures against nuclear missile attacks from the Soviet Union.
Today’s internet was born from this Sputnik crisis.
At that time, the US military utilized computers for various kinds of information processing and was able to overpower the Soviet Union in this field.
However, this computer technology offered no resistance against a nuclear missile attack from the Soviet Union.
If the computer melted at high temperatures generated by nuclear energy, the valuable data contained therein would be instantly lost.
As a result, network research began as a defense against nuclear attacks.
For example, if subjected to a nuclear attack, is it possible to transfer the data contained in one computer to another via a communication line?
This was the first idea to realize the internet, or so the internet’s military-origin theory goes.
On July 20, 1969, the United States accomplished mankind’s first moon landing with Apollo 11.
That same year, ARPANET, the base of the internet, was constructed by the United States Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA.