The Internet as we know it today was first conceptualized in the 1960s, but it has its roots in the 1950s and 1960s. Here's a brief timeline of the major milestones in the development of the Internet:
- 1957: The United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was established to develop and fund research projects in the fields of computer science, engineering, and mathematics.
- 1962: The first network, called ARPANET, was proposed by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, two computer scientists who would later become known as the "fathers of the Internet."
- 1969: The first message was sent over ARPANET, which was a test message that read "LO" (the system crashed before the full message could be sent).
- 1971: The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson, who also invented the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the hostname.