Detention Block AA23Prisoner Transfer from Cell Block 1138MenuSkip to contentHomeStolen Data Tapes20 Key Stages in the Evolution of the InternetA Pictorial History of the InternetOriginally from MaximumPC.comhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/20_key_stages_evolution_internet#slide-0 ARPANET – In October of 1969, a connection was made between computers at UCLA and Stanford University. Called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the networked computers were the first in history to ever utilize packet switching, making them the great grand daddy of the Internet as we know it today. The research that led to the completion of the project was funded by the United States Department of Defense.Email – If you ever run into Ray Tomlinson, take a moment to thank him for helping to shape the modern world. In 1971, Tomlinson created the world’s first inter-host email system on ARPANET. In order to indicate what machine email users were sending their mail from, Tomlinson decided that an ampersat would be used, creating the user@username.com format that we’re still rocking today.The Transatlantic Internet – Back in 1973, as the U.S. Senate plunged into the Watergate hearings, researchers were busy pimping ARPANET out with it’s first trans-Atlantic connection to the University College of London in the United Kingdom. By that point, upwards of 75% of all ARPANET traffic consisted of email: A fascinating statistic, given that the first email client wouldn’t be developed for another two years.The Birth of TCP/IP – In December of 1974, Network Working Group members Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine published a paper that started ARPANET down a road that would shape the internet as we know it today. The paper was called ‘Specifications of Internet Transmission Control Program’, and it detailed a method for interlinking independent networks through the use of a transmission control protocol. This concept matured into TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.The Original Email Client – With interconnectivity between multiple networks rapidly becoming a reality, the number of email users swelled to unprecedented numbers. This massive influx of new users was likely due in part to the fact that in 1975, a University of Southern California John Vittal developed the first email client. Called MSG, the program offered amazing new features such as buttons to reply to or forward mail with relative simplicity—functions we all take for granted today.The Modem – As computers became compact and affordable enough for many hobbyists to keep in their homes, a demand for single user network connectivity emerged. In response to the yearning of the growing computer geek community to dial-in, Dale Heatherington (pictured above) and Dennis Hayes created and marketed the first PC modem in 1977.SPAM – With the advent of interconnected computer networks, email and the growing number of users leveraging c