No, it was not Al Gore. The Department of Defense invented the Internet, of course. It was
there means of insuring bi-coastal communications in the event of a war on
United States soil. Remember, the Internet [Advanced Research Projects Agency Network a.k.a. ARPANET] dates back to the 1960's;
the height of the Cold War era.
A climate of pure research surrounded the entire history of the ARPANET.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency was formed with an emphasis towards
research, and thus was not oriented only to a military product.
The formation of this agency was part of the U.S. reaction to the then
Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957. (ARPA draft, III-6). ARPA was
assigned to research how to utilize their investment in computers via
Command and Control Research (CCR). Dr. J.C.R. Licklider was chosen
to head this effort. Licklider came to ARPA from Bolt, Beranek and Newman,
(BBN) in Cambridge, MA in October 1962. (ARPA draft, III-6)
On a cold war kind of day, in swinging 1969, work began on the
ARPAnet, grandfather to the Internet. Designed as a computer version of
the nuclear bomb shelter, ARPAnet protected the flow of information between
military installations by creating a network of geographically separated computers
that could exchange information via a newly developed protocol
(rule for how computers interact) called NCP (Network Control Protocol).
The first data exchange over this new network occurred between computers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute. On their first attempt to log into Stanford's computer by typing "log win", UCLA researchers crashed their computer when they typed the letter 'g'.
Four computers were the first connected in the original ARPAnet. They were located in the respective computer research labs of UCLA (Honeywell DDP 516 computer), Stanford Research Institute (SDS-940 computer), UC Santa Barbara (IBM 360/75), and the University of Utah (DEC PDP-10). As the network expanded, different models of computers were connected, creating compatibility problems. The solution rested in a better set of protocols called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) designed in 1982.
To send a message on the network, a computer breaks its data into IP (Internet Protocol) packets, like individually addressed digital envelopes. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) makes sure the packets are delivered from client to server and reassembled in the right order.
Under ARPAnet several major innovations occurred: email (or electronic mail), the ability to send simple messages to another person across the network (1971); telnet, a remote connection service for controlling a computer (1972); and file transfer protocol (FTP), which allows information to be sent from one computer to another in bulk (1973).
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