Map of the Internet from 1973 Found, and it Fits on One Page

in #news8 years ago (edited)

A 43 year old map shows 36 nodes, connecting 42 computer hosts, making up the totality of the internet in May 1973.

An original Map of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), forefather of the internet we have today, has been uncovered from the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh, PA.

Shortly after this map was created, the internet went global with a satellite link beaming ARPANET access to Norway and London.

may19732cd07.jpg

David Newbury is the Carnegie Museum of Art employee who found this map in a bunch of old papers from his dad who had been working there since the 70's. He posted it December 10th on Twitter.

You can see on the map Hawaii is on the far left, West. Close by you have Stanford and UCLA. Going to the East, there is Carnegie, Harvard and MIT. Ovals are host computers, while squares routing devices connecting them.

There was a previous map released, dated to September 1973, but this one is from May.

From the September map, you can see some slight changes, that's because only one new router was being added per month to the ARPANET.

map-internet-september6f52d.jpg

Which looks like:

geographic-internet-197300f1c.jpg

It wasn't until 1990 that the first website was "turn on" by Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at the CERN research facility in Switzerland.

This is a previous map of unknown time:

internet-unknownb1455.jpg

While back in 1969 this is all there was:

internet-1969e81fc.jpg

We have come a long way since then.

This is what the internet looks like now:

900px-Internet_map_1024a89e9.jpg


References:


@krnel
2016-12-17, 11:05am

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I guess our map today will look equally simple and rudimentary in another 40 years

IPv6 and yeah a lot bigger

Very intersting posting. Thank's a lot.


Hi @krnel, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads today/yesterday and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.

That unknown map may have been Al Gore's lol!

Bonus images because your post reminded me these little gems exist

Map of the Internet from 2006 https://xkcd.com/195/

Map of Online Communities from 2007 https://xkcd.com/256/

Map of Online Communities from 2010 https://xkcd.com/802/

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workergnome David Newbury tweeted @ 10 Dec 2016 - 21:53 UTC

Going through old papers my dad gave me, I found his map of the internet as of May 1973.

The entire internet. https://t.co/0krvYoRGav

Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.

Many people don't think of Utah when you are discussing the early pioneering days, but Utah really is its own little silicon valley.