This "computer unsavvy" person got the questionable task of developing a list of definitions for distance learning and the Web. This is definitely the Peter Priniciple at work because this project is way out of my league.

So--I went to the internet for help and found this site that has been quite useful. However, there definition of "Internet" surprised me:

"Internet - A globe-spanning network of networks, the Internet grew out of a national data transmission system originally implemented in the 1960s by the US Department of Defense. The original system was put in place to give government scientists, scattered around the country, access to powerful computers without building a lot of the expensive machines." Does anyone know if that is the case?

Yes Kalleh, which bit of that surprises you?

It's describing Arpanet, which was first used to link computers in four U.S. universities in 1969 -- funded by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, thus the name.

Perhaps you're surprised because "the Web" doesn't seem that old? You should distinguish between the "Web" (which was only invented in 1991) and the Internet. The Internet is the network of computers (the infrastructure if you like) and the Web is only one of many applications that run on the Internet. E-mail is another (older) application -- it's not the Web, but it also uses the Internet.

Think of roads. The road network -- tarmac, roundabouts, traffic lights -- has been in place for ages, and is used for different "applications" -- car driving, parcel delivery, freight haulage, coach tours, etc.

The first ever use of the Internet was remote access -- letting someone in say California use a computer in say Utah without actually going to Utah. Then came file transfer (ftp), then e-mail, then the Web.

Or maybe you were surprised by the "Government scientists" bit? More like computer science geeks in several universities who persuaded a government agency to give them some funding. I don't think the early poineers of Arpanet would like being described as "Government scientists", somehow. They were definitely (mostly) of the sixties, hippy, liberal persuasion. Best book ever on all this is this one by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon.

One thing to remember is that the Internet grew out of the Cold War. It was important that the computers not be cut off from one another, even if a slice of the country were taken out. Geeks in New York and LA would still be able to communicate even if Chicago were vapourised. The concept of sending "packets" of data through the Network, with each packet taking a different route, was an attempt to overcome this problem using redundancy and is the basis of the modern Internet.

I think the concept of packet-switching certainly grew out of a concern for (among other things) nuclear war survivability. Paul Baran (whose idea it was) was certainly interested in such things, and wrote a series of reports on the subjects for the RAND Corporation.

But I'm not sure it was a major factor in the design of the Internet, which grew out of a desire by geeks to do something neat, and which would also make their lives easier. Packet-switching was chosen for reasons other than nuclear survivability, although that may have been a useful hook on which to hang further Pentagon funding requests. Certainly when it started, Arpanet had no such aim, and was pretty much a minor project. Larry Roberts is usually accepted as the designer of the early Arpanet, and Hafner and Lyon say of him:

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Roberts was designing this experimental network not with survivable communications as his main -- or even secondary -- concern. Nuclear war scenarios, and command and control issues, weren't high on Roberts's agenda.

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Also of course, Arpanet (and later the Internet) are not part of the command and control system for nuclear weapons, so its survivability is not maybe a priority. "The Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attack" has become something of an urban myth, I believe.

This is a fascinating discussion. Paul, I guess my curiosity was with the idea that the Americans first developed the Internet. However, you have clarified that, and I find it interesting that (from another thread) the World Wide Web is, like the computer itself, a British invention (Tim Berners-Lee, now at MIT). I did not know that the computer was a British invention. And, arnie, your observation that the Internet grew out of the Cold War is so interesting.

Oh I see. Yes, definitely a U.S. development.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I did not know that the computer was a British invention.

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To be fair, I think it depends a bit on how you define "computer", and it was certainly very close (within a year or two). There's no doubt you were getting there at pretty much the same time.

I am still working on those Web/Internet/Distance Learning definitions, and today I got to the "W's". My source says that the debut (their words, not mine ) of the Web is credited to Tim Berners-Lee of CERN in Switzerland. Is that incorrect?

BTW, has anyone heard of "presentation corners" related to distance learning? I am stuck on that definition.

Yes, Tim Berners-Lee is a British (English, actually) scientist who was working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1991 when he invented the WWW. He's two years younger than me, which is depressing.

As you'd maybe expect, he has his own web pages. They're here.

Arguably it was popularised by Marc Andreesen (an American).

Kalleh, sounds like you'd find http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers useful in your task (although it doesn't mention Jon Postel, and it really should, especially as he died a few years ago).