Recently, Gordon Crovitz wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled Who Really Invented the Internet? Fortunately, it was only an opinion piece, because there was little more than opinion, littered with plenty of misinformation, in the writing. You can read the article here.
Now, it?s not like I look to the WSJ for the latest technology information (or, in this case, technology history). Far from it. And generally when a here?s-the-truth-you-never-knew article starts with political?propaganda, it?s pretty safe to assume that whatever comes next is going to be absurd. A summary of the article?s introduction could essentially be, ?Obama said something that was true, but I?ll be darned if I can?t find a way to make it sound false!?
Even still, to those of us in the technology field, the ?first computer? and ?who invented the internet? discussions are highly revered and hotly debated, so when someone not in the industry starts screaming that they have a complete and final answer to these discussions, we usually just scoff.?In Crovitz?s defense, he seems to be confusing ?internet? with many other terms that merely relate to networking and computers. But that?s about the extent I?d go to to defend him; he?s a conservative author trying to make something out of nothing just because a liberal said it.
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Due to the fact that I?m more than a little OCD, I wound up relating the history of internet technology through the ages to my Grandpa, who originally sent me the Crovitz article. Much of the details below are in response to specific parts of Crovitz?s article, so, as painful as it may be, I recommend you read that article first. Alright, ready? Begin.
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Personal Computer: The term ?personal computer? was not coined until 1975 for the Altair 8800. However, it is highly disputed that Xerox created the first ?personal computer?, by whatever modern definition you use. IBM created the first electronic computer in 1953 (the IBM 701), Digital Equipment Corporation created the first digital computer in 1960, and Hewlett-Packard release the first mass-produced digital computer in 1968, the HP 9100A.
Personal Workstation: This is the term the WSJ author is looking for in their article. The first personal workstation, a ?workstation? being a computer that can be connected to another computer (in this case, through the Ethernet technology he referenced), was created by Xerox in 1974. However, the computers used by ARPANet were technically also workstations, just not mass produced.
Intranet?(take special note of the ?a?): A connection between two or more computers within the same network. The network in your house is an ?intranet?.
Internet?(take special note of the ?e?): A connection between two or more networks. The wires that connect your house?s network to mine are the ?internet?.
ARPANet: The first computer network (or ?intranet?), created by the Department of Defense, which was fully implemented in 1969. I?ve never heard it associated with nuclear strikes or anything of the sort. It was created merely to replace slow and overused satellite communication between government agencies. When originally created, it did not use TCP/IP, it used NCP.
DNS:?DNS stands for ?Domain Name System?. It?s interesting that, for an article claiming Ethernet was more defining to the internet than TCP/IP, the article makes no mention of DNS, the third essential component to the modern internet. Though you type in ?google.com? to get to Google, Google?s website actually lives at an Internet Protocl (IP) address of?173.194.34.165. This IP address is similar to your human?s street address. People cannot be expected to remember an IP address?s for their favorite websites, so DNS was invented to resolve a host name (google.com) to an IP address. This is similar to me saying ?Mom and Dad?s House? instead of ?1540 W. Main St., Robins IA 52328?.
RFC:?RFC stands for ?Request for Comment?. The article does not mention these, but they are crucial to understand when things were adopted. They?re sort of like the Congressional bills of the technology world, but more well-defined. RFC documents are official definitions of technological protocols or interfaces. When something is adopted as a standard, an RFC fully defining it is written, and, if other people want to interface with it, they use that ?law? to know how things work. The very first RFC, RFC 1, was called ?Host Software? and dictated the infrastructure of ARPANet. RFC 791 was for TCP/IP 1981. RFC 894 was for Ethernet in 1984. RFC 1035 was for DNS in 1987. These dates do not necessarily correspond to when the interfaces were created, but they do indicate when the interfaces were standardized and/or adopted.
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Difference Between Intranet and Internet
So, what is the difference between the an ?intranet? and the ?internet?. First of all, the foundational structures of the ?internet? are identical to the ?intranet? (that being TCP/IP referenced in the article). Once there was the possibility for the intranet, the possibility for the internet also existed, but it was not realized until a bit later, which is why Xerox is trying to claim credit for that. It?s a chicken-or-the-egg argument. Naturally, each company (and the Pentagon) claim different loose definitions of all these terms so that they can claim credit for actually inventing the end result. The fact is, none and all of them invented it ? which coincides with Obama?s remarks pretty well, if you ask me.
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TCP/IP and Ethernet
First of all, it?s sad that the article references Vinton Cerf but makes no mention of Bob Kahn. They collaborated together to define TCP/IP, but Kahn rarely gets the credit he deserves. Kahn was actually the one with the idea of TCP/IP, and Cerf was in charge of the implementation and later the RFC definition.
Secondly, it should be highly suspect that much of the WSJ author?s claims come from a book written about Xerox. More significantly, after the WSJ article was published, the author of the cited book released a statement refuting the article and saying the article misrepresented the content of his book.
Naturally, Xerox will claim ?full credit? for a discovery, as many other companies have done as well, but they cannot claim full credit as they utilized standards that had already been put in place (namely TCP/IP). However, their contribution to the internet?s development was equally strong. Ethernet was merely a communication standard that allowed passing data (at very high speeds) between two computers using TCP/IP. Neither technology would ever have been adopted by the private sector (and ultimately the world) without something like ?
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DNS
The Domain Name System was invented in 1983, and the internet would not exist without it, just like TCP/IP and Ethernet. I won?t go into details of why it was necessary, but it was created when issues were seen in how hosts were resolved with ARPANet. It was obvious that as ARPANet got larger, the way hosts were resolved (me asking, ?Hey, what?s Mom and Dad?s address?) would become weaker and weaker (and certainly slower and slower). So they decentralized their host resolution to several Domain Name Systems rather than a centralized location at the Pentagon. This was essentially the birth of the privatized internet, as we know it, but that is not to discredit its foundations.
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So Did Xerox Invent the Internet or Not?
It?s a bit arrogant for Xerox (or any one company or government organization) to accept or take full or even majority credit for the invention of the modern day internet. It was a combined effort of multiple unrelated parties, companies, and government organizations. People usually credit the Department of Defense with the creation of the internet because, without the funding and research for TCP/IP, the advancement toward what we have today would have been much slower (assuming it ever happened at all). Additionally, though Xerox used TCP/IP to invent Ethernet, they gave the Ethernet?protocol?right back to the government, and the government subsidized the work. So did the government invent (or largely fund) the framework that is the internet? Technically, yes.
The reason the internet became privatized had little to do with little government/big government politics and everything to do with decentralization. The fundamental structure and combination of TCP/IP and Ethernet led to DNS, and once DNS was introduced it became obvious that the internet was going to become a worldwide tool that could not be contained or centralized by any one government or entity. Ironically, however, the U.S. government did still control the all DNS servers, and government organizations were the only ones with access to the internet.
Though Xerox coupled Ethernet with TCP/IP to create the first network-to-network communication and DNS offered the potential to use the service around the globe, it was not commercialized. It was not until 1992 when Congress passed a bill (spearheaded by Al Gore, which is usually why people misquote him to make the joke that he invented the internet) that allowed commercial access to the internet. This began the privatization of the internet, but the government still controlled all DNS servers.
For six more years the internet was essentially still controlled by the U.S. government, but commercial entities were allowed to use it. In 1998 (not sure what event the article is referring to when it says 1995), the Clinton administration issued a mandate to form a non-profit organization called the International Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The U.S. government gave control of all DNS servers, maintenance, and documentation of internet infrastructure to ICANN. And you thought Google owned the internet. At that point, the internet became officially and completely privatized.
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Conclusion
Even still, the Department of Defense, Vinton Cerf, and Bob Kahn do deserve full credit for the creation of the first intranet/network and the initial ideas for networking protocols. The natural successor to that was Ethernet, DNS, and ultimately a privatized and distributed internet as we know it today.
Here?s a more simple example to help with the comparison. Assume for a moment that, prior to Henry Ford, nobody had ever done anything with a vehicle that moved (without assistance from an outside force) from point A to point B. Ford created the Quadricycle as his first vehicle. He then adapted that into the Model T. Is the Model T any more or less of a vehicle? It has more of the parts that we?re used to today, and it was certainly much more luxurious. But to say then that, because the Model T is more like what we have today, the Quadricycle was?not?a vehicle is silly. The Quadricycle was still a vehicle that moved you from point A to point B. The Model T was the natural successor to that, and cars have progressively become more and more advanced (with newly invented technology added to them) as society has advanced.
In the same way, ARPANet moved network information from point A to point B. The internet was the natural successor to an intranet, but the same ideas and fundamental technology were used for it, so it is safe to say that the government formed what has become the internet. Which, I believe, was President Obama?s point. No argument here that the internet boomed beyond 1998 when it became fully privatized, but the internet also would not have been established in the first place without government research. Admittedly, the argument that the WSJ author and myself are making is primarily semantics.
So, the WJS article is not entirely incorrect in many of its assertions, but it seems to be trying to give a ?here?s the real truth? answer to a question that is far more complicated, and even among much more informed circles (it?s not like the WSJ claims to be a tech magazine or anything) these things are largely debated.
Source: http://alexlaird.net/2012/07/a-correction-for-the-wsj-so-who-did-invent-the-internet/
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