Before the internet

The internet’s beginnings can be traced back to an article written in 1947 by Vannevar Bush entitled ‘As we may think’ .

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Bush managed 6,000 scientists in creating new technologies for the United States during the second world war. He was a visionary who saw the possibility of creating a machine to store and share information.

Terming it a ‘memex’, Bush described tools used to link content together, add notes and share information between people using techniques similar to hyperlinks, webpages and internet connections.

None of the tools needed to make Bush’s vision a reality existed in 1947; however, they soon would. A commercially available computer was released in 1951, with the first sold to Manchester University in England. This was followed by nine more sold by 1957.

FORTRAN, the first high-level computer language was invented in 1956 by a team at IBM, making it much easier for academics and students to learn to program the computers arriving at their universities. The first hard drive was released in the same year, also from IBM, holding 5MB of information at a cost of US$50,000.

Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite launched by the Russians on 4 October 1957.
Source: Picture from NASA

In 1957, Sputnik was launched into space by the Russians, starting the space race that would lead to the development of thousands of communications satellites, previously foreseen by the science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. The launch prompted the United States to create ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) and begin investing heavily in the development of new computing and communications technologies.

In 1958, the first system for sending data across phone lines was developed. Bell Systems termed it the Data-Phone, and it became the precursor to the modem.

At the end of the same year, the first paper proposing the development of ‘Infrared and Optical Masers’ was written. These ‘optical masers’ later became known as lasers. These are used today in computers and were necessary for the development of fibre-optic cables that now transmit internet and television across the world.

By 1960 the first telecommunications satellite, Echo, was launched by the United States. In the same year, Joseph Licklider published another visionary paper ‘Man-Computer Symbiosis’ .

This paper suggested a number of ways that people could interact with computers more effectively – such as using keyboards, monitors and voice recognition rather than punch cards and oscilloscopes. He also suggested a network of computing centres connected via communications lines – an internet.

His later paper ‘The Computer as a Communications Device’ in 1968 went into more detail about computer networks and their use in communications, including suggesting the possibility of video-conferencing, working collaboratively on projects and even romancing across networks.

At a project meeting held through a computer, you can thumb through the speaker’s primary data without interrupting him to substantiate or explain.


A communication system should make a positive contribution
to the discovery and arousal of interests.
Source: Pictures by Rowland B Wilson. By permission of the
Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto,
California.

In 1962 the first modem, the Bell 103, was introduced for sale. It had a speed of 300 baud, or 300 bits per second. A few months later, Licklider co-published with Wesley Clark another paper 'On-Line Man-Computer Communication' discussing a ‘Galactic Network’ concept that would allow people to access any information from any location using a network of computers. Licklider also became the head of the computer research project at ARPA.

Also in 1962 the first computer game, Space War , was created by Steve Russell while at MIT.

In 1963 Doug Engelbart invented the 'X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System', today known as a mouse and in 1964 Digital Equipment Corporation released the first mass-produced minicomputer. This began making computers more accessible to individuals where previously people had to share time on mainframe computer systems.