Did Al Gore Invent the Internet?

Lynch and Rose (1993) provide a detailed outline of the history of the Internet. The Internet is not new, nor is it a single entity; it was born about 35 years ago as a U.S. Defense Deparment network called APRnet. Krol (1992) states that the “APRAnet was an experimental network designed to support military research in particular, research about how to build networks that could withstand partial outages (like bomb attacks) and still function.”

The actual experiment for the Internet did not begin until 1968, when Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) connected computers over a shared network. This experiment focused on the host computers which store the data and computational resources shared by attached terminals, there was no visible attempt to create a large resource sharing computer network at the time.

In 1967, a year prior to the actual experiment, Frank Westerverlt of the University of Michigan wrote a research paper on how to exchange messages between different computers in a network setting, and how to select the types of communications lines and data sets. An ad hoc communication Group was then selected to experiment on the connection between computers by dial-up telephone line, based on Westerville’s paper.

In late 1969, a symmetrical host to host protocol, commonly known as Network Protocol was finally defined. To design a network consisting of different remote computers, researchers had to develop an idea to solve contrasting manufacture’s networking protocols, data lines, and hardware, etc. The result of their toils was TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). It was designed to connect different networks to each other and still have the hosts to communicate with at the same time. The idea of E-mail was not conceived until 1971, at which time two programmers at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) devised the plan of sending each other messages through their computer network.

An Internet virus attacked the Internet, paralyzing thousand of host computers on November 1st, 1988. This incident exposed the vulnerability of the Internet, and also raised the public awareness of the dark side of the electronic communication.

Due to new technologies and organizational restructuring, the U.S. Defense Department decided to put an end of the APRAnet. Together with several networks such as NSFnet, NASA, and the Department of Energy, the main backbone networks for the Internet was formed. Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet (he never said he did), but he was the first politician to promote this technology. I guess that we have to thank the U. S. Defense Department for creating the original Internet, and thank Al Gore for promoting this technology.