Year Event
1946 The first electronic computer, ENIAC, is constructed at the University of Pennsylvania.
1950 Alan Turing, an English mathematician and computer scientist, publishes a paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” that lays out what is now called the Turing Test to assess whether a machine can think.
1951 The first business computer, Leo, built by UK firm, J. Lyons & Co.
1957 The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite.
1958 To counter Soviet technological advances, the U.S. forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), within the Department of Defense, to develop U.S. leadership in science and technology applicable to the military.
1969 The Internet is “born” in the form of a host computer at UCLA networked to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute. Soon thereafter, a third node is added at UC-Santa Barbara and a fourth node at the University of Utah. This four-node network is referred to as ARPANET.
1970 First applications of electronic data interchange (EDI).
1971 ARPANET becomes capable of transmitting electronic mail. Within months, email becomes the prominent form of traffic on ARPANET.
1972 ARPA renamed DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
1973 First international connection to ARPANET, University College of London.
1973 Initial work on a transmission protocol (later to be called TCP/IP) that allows diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.
1975 Responsibility for managing ARPANET is given to the U.S. Defense Communications Agency.
1981 The IBM personal computer (PC) is released. Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet software is credited as a major factor in the PC’s popularity.
1982 The first Internet search engine, WHOIS.
1983 Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) becomes the ARPANET’s official protocol. This leads to a definition of an “Internet” as a connected set of networks, specifically those using TCP/IP, and “Internet” as connected TCP/IP Internets.
1983 U.S. Defense Communications Agency splits ARPANET into two components: MILNET for military use and ARPANET (or the “ARPA Internet”) for academic research use.
1984 U.K. Joint Academic Network (JANET) is established for research and education.
1984 Science fiction author William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace” in his novel, Neuromancer. Internet host computers (computers with registered IP address) exceed 1,000.
1984 The Domain Name System (DNS) is introduced, providing a method of converting computers’ IP addresses based on numbers into words, which are easier for humans to remember.
1988 An Internet worm disables 6,000 of 60,000 Internet hosts. A Cornell University graduate student created the worm. Infected computers were connected through ARPANET and other email networks in the Internet loop. Some of the US’s top science and research centers were affected.
1989 Sir Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN in Geneva, devises the structure of the World Wide Web (WWW), specifically to meet the demand for automated information-sharing.
1990 The ARPANET is shut down and replaced by the NSFNET.
1991 Sir Tim Berners-Lee, develops a hypertext system, HTML, to provide efficient information access. He posts the first computer code of the World Wide Web in a relatively innocuous newsgroup, “alt.hypertext.” Later, people refer to the Internet itself as the Web.
1992 World Wide Web (WWW) is released by CERN.
1994 Netscape Navigator web browser is released. Netscape’s graphical interface significantly improves the WWW’s accessibility and usability.
1994 Pizza Hut sells pizza on its website.
First Virtual, the first cyberbank, opens.
1995 The Internet becomes a private entity as the NSF completes selling off its resources, leading to a rapid increase in commercial activity on the Internet.
1995 Netscape goes public, and the dot com boom begins.
1995 The number of Internet hosts passes 10 million.
1996 Email surpasses postal mail in the U.S.
1996 The first known distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack occurs, knocking Internet service provider Panix offline for several days.
1997 NSFNET is decommissioned by the NSF, effectively turning the Internet over to the private sector.
1997 Inception of business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce.
1997 US Postal Service issues electronic postal stamps.
1999 Napster, a peer-to-peer file sharing application, is created. Subsequent sharing of digital music files resulted in a legal battle over digital rights and piracy.
2001 Fewer than half (45 percent) of Internet users communicate in English over the Internet.
2002 Google launches an online shopping service called Froogle (later renamed Google Shopping).
2002 Linkedin.com domain is created.
2003 The first specification of XBRL is released by XBRL International.
2005 YouTube and Reddit are launched.
2006 Twitter is launched.
2007 Apple introduces the iPhone.
2009 Bitcoin, a digital currency transacted on the Internet, is introduced.
2010 Ransomware attacks increase as digital currencies enable untraceable methods of payment.
2011 Sales of personal computers worldwide reach an annual all-time high of over 365 million.
2011 Internet users tally almost 2 billion. Users in over 200 countries are connected.
2012 The number of active Facebook users exceeds one billion.
2015 Starlink, a satellite-based Internet network, is announced.
2020 The COVID-19 virus outbreak causes worldwide disruptions in the technology industry.
2021 The term “Metaverse” becomes popularized, referring to an environment in which people can interact virtually in a digital world via the Internet.
2022 Content streaming via the Internet surpasses cable TV viewing for the first time.
2022 Investors lose billions of dollars as cryptocurrency exchange FTX declares bankruptcy.
2024 OpenAI's AI chatbot ChatGPT, previously released to the public two years earlier, becomes 9th most downloaded app worldwide.
2025 Total internet users worldwide number 5.56 billion (67.9 percent of population) and total social media users number 5.34 billion (63.9 percent of population).
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Sources: ComputerHope. (2023). Computer history. https://www.computerhope.com/history/; Loubere, P. A. (2021). A History of Communication Technology. Routledge; Crumbley, D., Paz, V., David, J., Smith, L.M., and Walton, S. (2021). Computer Encryptions in Whispering Caves: an AIS Action Adventure, 2nd Ed., an information technology educational novel, Durham, NC, Carolina Academic Press; Haigh, T., Russell, A. L., & Dutton, W. H. (2015). Histories of the Internet: Introducing a special issue of information & culture. Information & Culture, 50(2), 143-159; Smith, K.T. (2011). Consumer perceptions regarding e-commerce and related risks. B-Quest, 1-20; Kleinrock, L. (2008). History of the Internet and its flexible future. IEEE Wireless Communications, February, 8-18; Smith, L.M., Smith, K.T., & Gordon, S. (2003). Essentials of Accounting Information Systems. Austin, Texas: Leyh Publishing; Glowniak, J. (1998). History, structure, and function of the Internet. Seminars in Nuclear Medicine, 28(2), 135-144.
Cite this webpage: Smith, L.M. (2025), Key Events in the History of the Internet. https://bit.ly/history2internet.