Search Headquarters : Computers : Internet : History

A Brief History of the Internet
An anecdotal history by Walt Howe of the people and communities that brought about the Internet and the Web. Includes a glossary of terms.
http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

Brief History of the Internet
Ross Shannon provides an overview of the Internet's origins, from ARPANET and email to the Web. Includes a breakdown of the components that make up the Internet.
http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/starthere/historyofthenet.html

Community Memory
Archive of postings to this discussion list dedicated to the history of The Internet.
http://memex.org/community-memory.html

History of the Internet: Internet for Historians
This overview by Richard T. Griffiths covers the development of computers, ArpaNet, email, search engines and Basic Net Data.
http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/frame_theorie.html

History of the Web Beginning at CERN
Cheryl Gribble gives a clear outline with bibliography and links to related sites.
http://www.hitmill.com/internet/web_history.asp

The Internet: Past, Present and Future: Internet and WWW History
Scholarly article by Jesper Vissing Laursen on the development of the Internet.
http://www.vissing.dk/inthist.html

Internet Society: A Brief History of the Internet
An authoritative history, written by some of those who were most closely associated with its creation and development.
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

Internet Society: Internet Histories
A list of links to resources.
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/

The Morris Internet Worm
Charles Schmidt and Tom Darby explain the what, why, and how of the 1988 Internet worm.
http://www.snowplow.org/tom/worm/worm.html

NetHistory
Chris Condon's informal history of BITNET and the Internet. Includes early net publications.
http://nethistory.dumbentia.com/

Netizens Netbook
Anthology of the history of Usenet and the Internet, including descriptive as well as theoretical work.
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

The Role of Government in the Evolution of the Internet
Robet E. Kahn's contribution to "Revolution in the U.S. Information Structure", published in 1994 by the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/newpath/chap2.html

80s BBS
Yahoo group dedicated to the preservation of the history of the online world in the days before the Web (pre-1990). Text files, old buffer dumps, BBS discussions, buffers, or anything related to this era is welcome.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/80sBBS/

The Story of the PING Program
Brief article about this network utility, written by its creator, Mike Muuss.
http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/ping.html

A Tour of the Worm
Donn Seeley tells the story of the Internet Worm of 1988 and how it effectively shut down the Internet. Proceedings of the Winter USENIX Technical Conference, San Diego, California, January 1989.
http://world.std.com/~franl/worm.html

The World Wide Web History Project
A collaborative effort to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking.
http://www.webhistory.org/

World Wide Web Journal
Published from the winter of 1996 thru the fall of 1997. All issues online, including the Fourth International World Wide Web Conference Proceedings.
http://www.w3j.com/

World-Wide Web: Origins And Beyond
Lenny Zeltser describes some of the historical aspects of World-Wide Web development, as well as other forms of hypertext such as Xanadu.
http://www.zeltser.com/web-history/

Yahoo! Netrospective: 10 years, 100 moments of the Web
Yahoo!'s picks of the top 100 moments from the first 10 years of the Internet. Inspired by 10x10 by Jonathan Harris.
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/

Paul Graham - What the Bubble Got Right
Essay derived from an invited talk at ICFP 2004. Discusses the dot-com bubble and lasting lessons learned from it. (September, 2004)
http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html

SearchEngineWatch: Search Engine Birthdays
It's been a little more than ten years ago that the first web search engines were born. Chris Sherman charts the dates starting with WWW Wanderer in 1993. (September 9, 2003)
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3071951

From Wartime Tool to the Fish Cam
Scott Ruthfield explores the beginnings of the Internet, development of IMPs and packet-switching, ARPAnet, TCP/IP, and NSFNet, with references. (September, 1995)
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds2-1/inet-history.html

A Short History of Internet Protocols at CERN
Ben Segal traces the history of the Internet at CERN. (April, 1995)
http://ben.home.cern.ch/ben/TCPHIST.html

The Executive Computer; A Web of Networks, an Abundance of Services
An early New York Times article on the Internet. (February 28, 1993)
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5DC1239F93BA15751C0A965958260