The Internet is 40 years old today.

[httpwebwitch]

The internet celebrates its birthday today, September 2, with 40 years having passed since the first successful transfer of data between two computers.

The midwives for the modern era of communication were scientists at the University of Los Angeles in California (UCLA), who connected the neighbouring machines with a 15ft grey cable.

full story [telegraph.co.uk]

[Brett_Tabke]

WooHoo - Party!

[Demaestro]

I remember when I had to take the receiver from my rotary phone and put it on a stand that sent and received tones.

It was like listening to your fax machine dial but it would keep going every time you sent or received data.

My dad was/is a college professor and we only had to share the dial pool with about 250 people. It was "fast" after 9:00pm and it was always "slow" around dinner time... looking back it was just slow.

I can remember watching images load 1 pixel line at a time. It was like a game guessing what the picture was before it was fully revealed.

I remember discovering my first (bb) bulletin board, good times!

Happy Birthday, you have come a long way little buddy!

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I wish I was just forty years old, ;)

[sem4u]

Happy birthday internet! You have come a long way in 40 years ;)

[LifeinAsia]

How old is that in Internet years? About 13.5 billion years?

[netmeg]

And I didn't even get it a card.

[Dezblanco]

Wow, where do we send the cards, Al Gore 123 Elm St. Carthage, Tennessee?

[Leosghost]

Wow, where do we send the cards

tim berners-lee c/o cern

I would imagine he'd prefer email "congrats" to dead tree :)

[signor_john]

Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, not the Internet. And he did it in 1989, which was only 20 years ago. (It looks like we missed that birthday--according to W3.org, his "great unveiling" was on February 4 of that year.)

Maybe we could raise a toast to Tim Berners-Lee next February 4th when the World Wide Web reaches legal drinking age in the U.S. :-)

[Korrd]

Celebrating Sept 2, 1969 as the internet's birthday is sort of like celebrating the day your grandparents first made whoopee as your birthday.

[albo]

What's the birthday of webmasterworld?

[httpwebwitch]

interesting that we celebrated 20 years in 2003
[webmasterworld.com...]

and the same Al Gore joke surfaced then

[httpwebwitch]

And the same confusion betwixt "Internet" and "World Wide Web" was just as common then as it is now.

I hardly call connecting two computers together to be an Internet. Maybe I'm being harsh (or naive) but shouldn't the conception date be when TCP/IP was invented?

[tedster]

What's the birthday of webmasterworld?

It was late in 1999 - whois says the domain was acquired December 11, 1999. The forum started out earlier on searchengineworld.com and then was moved.

Brett would have the exact date for that move, however he's deep in Pubcon preparations right now and may not have the time to answer. Since we're coming up on ten years, you'll probably hear some celebration sounds as the date approaches.

[nealrodriguez]

blot, blot, blot! gunshot! fire! respect internet, man!

[wyweb]

Al Gore.. that's funny.. er, maybe not.

Happy b'day web. Enjoy it while you can. It's all downhill from here.

[caribguy]

Somebody already started celebrating this April:

TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments.

STEPHEN D. CROCKER in a NYT op-ed piece. He is the author of RFC 1

[johnnie]

*pops open a beer*

Any excuse for a celebration, ey?

[hutcheson]

Gore was in Vietnam (or on the way there) at the time--or, at least, so says Wikipedia. But no doubt, if necessary, Dan Rather can whip up a MS-Word-2007 document proving otherwise.

[cyberlogos]

" And the same confusion betwixt "Internet" and "World Wide Web" was just as common then as it is now.
I hardly call connecting two computers together to be an Internet. Maybe I'm being harsh (or naive) but shouldn't the conception date be when TCP/IP was invented?"

Can you suggest the best websources and bibliography to find the real and detailed history of www and the internet?

[oodlum]

More accurately the birthday of the LAN, no?

[httpwebwitch]

I hesitate to recommend the obvious, but there's this site that rhymes with Flickipeedia. They have many articles describing the history of all things computing.

[grandpa]

I tend to agree with httpwebwitch and odlum; the internet would have been born with the interconnection (protocol) between multiple users. The cabled connection sounds more like a LAN, but I suppose it depends on the protocols used?

...the Internet is a primary reason why TCP/IP is what it is today. In fact, the Internet and TCP/IP are so closely related in their history that it is difficult to discuss one without also talking about the other. They were developed together, with TCP/IP providing the mechanism for implementing the Internet.

TCP/IP Overview and History [tcpipguide.com]

What the heck... Happy (belated) Birthday!

[tangor]

Heck, kiddies, I was running a popular national BBS as early as 1985 at 110 baud. All the members cheered when I boosted to 300 baud, and flipped when I went two lines at 1200 baud, and later 2400, 9600. My, times have changed! About the time I was considering 4 lines at 19.2 reality of ROI manifested itself. Maintained the BBS at two lines at 57k until 1996 then quit. By then Mr. Gore's creation was beginning to make itself felt. After ADSL and Cable there's no going back. :)

Ain't 40 years, but happy birthday anyway!

[Jack_Hughes]

Can you suggest the best websources and bibliography to find the real and detailed history of www and the internet?

The best book I've read on the topic is Where Wizards Stay up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon

[wyweb]

Nice catch Jack. Read it and agree.