From The Pentagon To Monty Python: The Internet Turns 40

Tomorrow is the internet's fortieth birthday. Its creators are even throwing it a birthday party at the University of California, Los Angeles, the origin of the first message ever transmitted over what we know today as "the internet," on October 29, 1969. If you're wondering what the first message ever transmitted was -- the digital age's "Come here, Watson," statement, as it were -- it consisted of two letters: "LO." It was actually supposed to be "LOG," as in "LOG IN," but the receiving computer crashed after receiving just the first two letters -- not a very auspicious beginning, it must be admitted. Still, for poetic reasons, "LO" seems pretty apt: "Lo! The Internet was created!"

The project, the first linkage of two computers over a distance, was paid for by the Pentagon. Specifically, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. This was a Cold War agency created out of fear -- the fear that the Russians were ahead of us technologically. This fear was not unfounded at the time, since DARPA was a hasty response to the Russians launching the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. Americans could tune in their ham radios to a little "beep...beep...beep..." signal that crossed over our skies, and thus know that the Russians had done something we hadn't managed to do yet -- which was not only downright ominous in those days, but also downright inconceivable to many Americans. This was the dawn of the "space race" between the two countries, which culminated with the landing on the moon in 1969 of two Americans. But it also culminated in the same year with what was then called ARPANET.

The internet's birth was in the depths of the Cold War, created for scientists to exchange some very hot data -- the design and testing of nuclear weapons, for instance. Its transformation from its militaristic beginnings to where it stands now should be seen as the greatest "swords into plowshares" story in the history of mankind. Because today, while its origins are at best dimly remembered, what it has morphed into has gone far, far beyond the original intent -- and changed our planet and our way of life as a result.

Technology has grown by such leaps and bounds since 1969 that it's hard to conceive how things were before we all had access to computers. The 1970s saw the dawn of the "personal computer" -- a phrase unthinkable a mere decade earlier, when computers had shrunk from boxcar-sized to merely pickup-truck-sized... but were not expected to shrink much more. But the rapid progress of the microchip ushered in a revolution in such shrinkage. The first small computers were merely hobbyist machines for scientists and tinkerers, but Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak saw their true potential, and changed the world with the introduction of what became the Apple II. IBM, while much slower to accept such a radical idea, eventually introduced its own version, the "PC," or "Personal Computer." Since then, computers have gotten faster and data storage has gotten much, much better, so that today the machine you are likely reading this on is more powerful than the machines they were designing nuclear weapons on back in 1969. Indeed, the computer in your cell phone may even be more powerful.

The concept of linking computers together grew by leaps and bounds as well. In 1983, DARPA in essence split the net into two parts, the military component (renamed MILNET), and what became the commercial, public internet. Also at this time, TCP/IP protocols were introduced, which also fed the eventual explosive growth. The non-military net was also at this time opened up to much wider use within the universities where it had originated.

Networking was fast growing in the early 1980s on two other fronts -- the Local Area Network (LAN) and the first subscription service for online access. It was the era of TokenRing, Ethernet, and AppleTalk; of AOL and CompuServe. It may stun younger users today, but back then people paid ten bucks per hour to access online services -- which were laughably crude by today's standards. Heavy online users would often pay hundreds of dollars a month to access text-only, non-web data over their phone lines.

It was also the era of the beginnings of information overload. This led to the introduction of "bulletin boards" and automated file searching. The real beginnings of what we call "the internet" today were a message-posting area of the net called UseNet; and the beginnings of the Google-type search engine were the humble "gopher" software of the time.

But the real explosion came about in the early 1990s, with two cornerstone events -- opening up the internet to commerce, and the introduction of the World Wide Web. The internet, now being called "the Internet" (previously the term had not been used -- the inventor of the concept, in an early-1960s paper, called his dream an "Intergalactic Computer Network," which I always thought sounded way, way cooler...) was about to grow beyond all conception.

The World Wide Web, still known to us today in that "www" prefix in web addresses, was dreamed up a Swiss laboratory for (once again) nuclear research -- the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or CERN. For the second time, nuclear researchers came up with an idea which quickly outgrew its original scientific data-sharing purposes. The combination of hypertext (clickable links) and a common file format which included graphics (the HyperText Markup Language, or HTML) were soon exploited by the world's first truly effective graphic "browser," Mosaic. From Mosaic, Netscape was born, and the rest is history.

Of course it hasn't all been wine and roses along the way. The internet (the term is now used increasingly without benefit of capitalization, a mark of how common an idea it has become) also gave birth to online fraud and other forms of online crime. Back when the internet originated, the Pentagon was interested in its advanced researchers having the ability to easily talk to each other, to better share information. This information had a goal -- to always always stay one step ahead of our foes. At the time, this was mainly the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, China. These days, some of the most prevalent data attacks come from malware (Trojan horses, DDoS attacks, viruses, worms, botnets, and all the rest) which originate all over the world, with an unhealthy portion coming from (you guessed it) Russia and China. Which brings us, in a way, full circle.

But for many of us, the internet will serve one very important function far, far into the future. I speak of the immortalization in digital history of Monty Python's Flying Circus. When contemporaneous comedy troupes will long have been forgotten, centuries hence, Monty Python will still live on in its anti-paean to a Hormel meats product -- the lowly "spiced ham" in a can known as Spam.

Spam was widely consumed in Britain during World War II, due to it not being rationed as most meats were at the time (which alone says something). Spam became prevalent as a civilian wartime staple as a result. Which explains the origins of the Monty Python sketch, where a man and a woman argue over a cafe's breakfast selections which seem to contain far too much spam for the woman's liking (example from the menu: "Spam, egg, Spam, Spam, bacon, and Spam"). The idea that spam is prevalent and unwanted was first applied in the infancy of online gaming, and in the early 1990s was used specifically to describe an unwanted email solicitation for money. Knowing the makeup of online gamers back then, it's easy to see that a Monty Python reference would have caught on quickly, as one thing all geeks unanimously agree upon (both back then and today) is the sheer awesomeness of Monty Python. Because the term spam is now so universally accepted to describe unwanted email (even Hormel has largely given up on trying to stamp such usage out), it follows that the story of its origins -- complete with the original Monty Python "Spam sketch" -- will live forever in the digital world. For which we have the Pentagon to thank.

But in any case, tomorrow when you're reading your email, or deleting spam (90 percent of all email is now spam; an astounding figure, when you think about it), or browsing the web, or checking stock quotes, or doing your banking online, or reading an online news article, or writing a blog post, or researching a topic, or using a search engine, or playing an online game, or playing online poker for money, or even just looking at some porn -- take a moment to stop and raise your glass in a toast. Because the internet you are using to do all of these things is having a birthday, and it's the big four-oh.

Meaning we should all mark the occasion with a hearty: "Happy 40th birthday, internet!"

 

[Historical Note: For those interested, the very first "web page" is still available online, just to show how far we've come in less than two decades. It's pretty basic by today's standards, but the concept of "links" was brand new back then, keep in mind.]

 

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

 

 

 

Comments

[kenrynne]

Happy 4oth Internet! Thank you DARPA. Thank you Al Gore. And Thank you Ted Stevens for "the series of tubes" that has democratized information - of every quality - more than anything since the printing press.

[jimrs]

Newton Minow in '61, as head of the F.C.C., said that television in the U.S. was a vast wasteland.
He presented a cogent argument for replacing violent, brutal TV fare with constructive programs that motivate children to learn while also transmitting democratic values.
Talk about going from bad to worse, or, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.
The internet is a superb tool for information, and it offers us the opportunity to learn.
But, as they say, " a little education can be a dangerous thing ", so I assume that the ptb/mic/media
are highly concerned that the great unwashed can see how they are being used.
I value the internet and sites like Huff Po. Enjoy them while you can.

[rughead23]

I serf (Surf?) the internet for news. Though I do use the internet for music therapy....One of my favorite tunes to date is 'Modern Love' by David Bowie. If I get hacked so be it....Have you ever seen the movie 'Sliver'?

[COPerez]

When I was in college (1979 - 1983) we had a large "main'frame" in the basement of one of the academic buildings and "dumb terminals" in our study areas.

I remember doing homework for my FORTRAN class; typing in lines of code which you couldn't see until the line printed out on tractor-fed, wide-format, blue-and-white paper. We were supposed to write out a description of what we wanted our code to do, then diagram the program and only then write the code on paper first before taking it to the terminal. I enjoyed going right from idea to typing code.

While remembering the above, I was checking e-mail and the weather on my iPhone...

[lastpost]

“gave birth to online fraud and other forms of online crime”

It is said that attack is the best form of defence. So why not devise programs that actively exploit the weaknesses of the opponent? For example, when a computer is raided for personal bank details, assist that intrusion. But supply instead, a stream of erroneous data. Information credible enough to require time consuming verification, by the criminal. But nevertheless ultimately unusable. Similarly, generate single-use pin numbers/transaction authentication codes from a sequential list held in a personal key-fob sized device. Which can then be confirmed by comparison against an identical list held in a bank’s computer. Such that these numbers change, each time they are used.

[Bradson]

For me, the digital revolution didn't become useful until 1997 when I was given my first PC and graphics software to create cartoons and other graphics for a friend's website. Mac users had been doing this for awhile, but those pricey machines were, and still are, out of reach. It took the improvement of the Windows OS to be able to handle these tasks on relatively cheap PCs to open the digital world to me and many other artists. Since then, advancement in software and affordable hardware has been rapid, and I soon abandoned traditional art tools in favor of digital art production. I'm always on a learning curve and still sit in amazement sometimes at the capabilities that these tools allow for expressing and continually developing one's creativity.

[GrizzlyBowman]

I started out with Bulletin Board Systems and a Hayes 300 Modem in the early 1990s.

My first Internet experience was with America Online over 14.4Kbps. I was, I believe, 11 years old at the time.

The owner of the dial up ISP I subscribed to once said, "Have you ever looked at a phone wire? 56K will never work!"

2-3 years later, consumer Digital Subscriber Line hit the scene, delivered over common 24 AWG phone lines, albeit 100% digitally.

If the government knew then what they know now about how the Internet has transformed Media and Political Accountability, I'm not certain they would have allowed what became the Internet to expand in the way it has. Social venues like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace; and Independent media sites like Newsvine, TMZ, Politico, and this site make new developments viral inside of mere minutes. With the Internet, everyone knows what was said and or done almost instantaneously. It makes the margin for error in reporting and governing extremely low.

I'm not sure what I did before I had the Internet--I only remember I was bored a lot.

[TOOO]

Oh, by the way, John Cleese - who is the closest thing to the leader of the Pythons - recently turned 70. And, if you saw the Pythons recently on the Jimmy Fallon Show, they're still a bunch of b@ll-breakers. Poor Jimmy!

Also, the article didn't mention MMOs. That's also becoming a big part of the Internet.

[gurukalehuru]

You failed to credit Al Gore. I count that as a snub.

[Matt Osborne - Huffpost Blogger]

Next, the cloud computer achieves consciousness with god-like powers and demands we bring it a shrubbery.

[jbl inAZ]

One of the things that must be kept clear, is that "spam", or "Spam", or most other variants, may be used to describe unwanted email (and massively duplicated usenet postings before that). However, the all-Caps version, SPAM®, is reserved by and for the Hormel Corporation as the trademark for its well-known canned meat product. This was stipulated by Hormel when they graciously decided not to get all legal on everyone's behind about people using the the term "spam" for junk e-mail. So please don't refer to email with all capital letters, and reserve that for the food product.

[Chris Weigant - Huffpost Blogger]

jbl_inAZ -

In that case, I'm really glad I used the generic "Spam" everywhere, instead of the proprietary SPAM®. Learn something new every day, I guess....

But I couldn't help, in the tags I assigned to this column (up top) adding "spam spam spam spam" as a tag. Who knows? Someone's going to search on it someday....

"Lovely SPAM®... Wonderful SPAM®..."

Heh heh.

:-)

-CW

[jbl inAZ]

I'm sure you'll get a lot of variations of this, but after the Milnet / Arpanet split, Arpanet quietly died away. The Internet was mostly a combination of the National Science Foundation NSFNet, and a bunch of other regional networks like NEARnet, the New England Academic Reasearch Network, and it was able to come into existence because of ARPA research in the '70s into gateways between networks and the Internet Protocol (IP, part of TCP/IP) that enables network hosts to use them. The more recent timeline looks fairly correct to me.

[Chris Weigant - Huffpost Blogger]

jbl_inAZ -

Yeah, the whole split in the early 80s gets confusing and fuzzy and takes lots of separate tracks, so I intentionally kept the story a bit vague there. As for protocols, in an earlier life I knew the whole TCP/IP stack of protocols (and many others) down the the physical layer, and could read packets off a sniffer like I read congressional committee transcripts today. But those days are (thankfully) gone. Packet-sniffing is SERIOUSLY boring... more boring than committee reports, even....

The one thing I wanted to include in this, which I couldn't find an accurate reference for, was the name of the old node or email addresses, in the format of "123456:7890". All I remember at the time is they were one cool thing to have on a geeky business card, and showed that you were still cool with your university's computer department (who let you keep such an address after you graduated, even though it really should have been shut off). But for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name of these identifiers. The only thing I could think of was "Ethernet address" but that was back before Ethernet became a wire and LISAs were the hot thing from Apple...

Anyway, I mention it only because you sound like you're from the same time period (man, we're really "dating" ourselves here, aren't we?), so maybe you'd know, 'cause it's still bugging me...

Also to say, thank all that's holy that the per-minute pay structure of connecting to the internet died a miserable death in the late 80s... I still remember the first "$19.95 per month -- no time limits!" advertising like it was manna from heaven...

-CW

[jbl inAZ]

Email addresses within a system - services like compuserve, telenet, AOL, etc., existed ahead of the internet - generally consisted of the simple user-id. In compuserve, the ID was the standard Tops10 identifier, which looked like "[71003,14558]". Is this what you are thinking of?

It was very early in development of networking, where an email address need a destination host name, that Ray Tomlinson chose the "at" sign - @ - as a separator, so my email address became not just 'levin' but 'levin@bbn' -- I had a place!

--jbl

[RobinLandseadel]

Chris---surely you must have read Thomas Pynchon's latest: Inherent Vice. The nascent Arpanet has a large role to play in Pynchon's "Psychedelic Noir."

[Chris Weigant - Huffpost Blogger]

RobinLandseadel -

I'm afraid I haven't, but then, Christmas is coming up, so maybe it'll be under the tree...

:-)

-CW

[RobinLandseadel]

Pages 53/54:

"Wow, Fritz." It was like being inside a science-fictional Christmas tree. Little red and green lights were going on and off everywhere. There were computer cabinets, consoles with lit-up video screens, and alphanumeric keyboards, and cables running all over the floor among unswept drifts of little bug-size rectangles punched out of IBM cards, and a couple of Gestetner copy machines in the corner, and towering over the scene all along the walls a number of Ampex tape reels busily twitching back and forth.

''ARPAnet,'' Fritz announced.

''Ah, no I'd better not, I've got to drive and stuff, maybe just give me one for later-"

"It's a network of computers, Doc, all connected together by phone lines. UCLA, Isla Vista, Stanford. Say there's a file they have up there and you don't, they'll send it right along at fifty thousand characters per second."

"Wait, ARPA, that's the same outfit has their own sign up on the freeway at the Rosecrans exit?"

"Some connection with TRW, nobody over there is too forthcoming, like Ramo isn't telling Woolridge?"

"But ... you're saying somebody hooked up to this thing might know where Shasta is?"

"Can't know till we look. All over the country, in fact the world, there's new computers gettin plugged in every day. Right now it's still experimental, but hell, it's government money, and those f-----s don't care what they spend, and we've had some useful surprises already."