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Start off with a joke about computers from Homer Simpson
Internet: International Network of computers.
History: In 1957 The Advanced Research Projects Division (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense is started after Russia launches Sputnik, the first earth orbiting satellite.
The Internet was started in 1969 by Bolt, Beranek, and Newman who were under contract to the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. They wanted to create a way for widely separated computers that was used by ARPA and their Researchers, defense contractors, military command centers, and universities to transfer information and data among themselves and to make data communications as reliable as possible in case of a nuclear attack.Also Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf ,graduate students, and Professor Len Kleinrock at UCLA who Sept. 2, 1969, tested bits of meaningless test data that flowed between two computers. This expanded over time to the Internet. More here.
It worked so well that non -military research institutions developed their own networks. In 1973 the Defense Advanced Project Agency started the Internetting Project. Their goal was to create a uniform communications language that would let the competing networks talk to each other. This language is called Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TPC/IP). ARPANET ceased to exist in 1990.
With the invention of personal computers, fast modems and an easier programming language, the Internet is widely used today.
Statistics: E-land, an Internet market research firm, projects that 142 million people worldwide will have Internet access by the year 2000. Forester Research forecasts that 33% of on-line users will be under 30 years old. Now over 4 million people 18-34 search the Internet. Three million people under 18 are on-line either from home or school. The Internet is accessible in more that 100 countries, and there are more that 1 million web servers world wide. An average world wide web page contains about 500 words, and experts put the number of web pages somewhere between 30 and 50 million.
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