A
system was begun in 1968 to allow connection points between local
computer networks and ARPAnet. ARPANET was a large wide-area
network created by the United States Defense Advanced Research
Project Agency ("ARPA"). A standard protocol was developed
in 1983 (TCP/IP, "Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol") which was made the standard for communication.
HTTP ("HyperText Transfer Protocol") followed shortly thereafter. This made the system widely accessible to
experienced computer users, but not yet to the general public.
In
1990-91 Timothy Berners-Lee was given approval by his
boss to write a program that he called "WorlDwidEweb" (using
a playful capitalization of letters typical among programmers), now
referred to as "www". This
program was a prototypical HTML-type ("HyperText
Markup Language")authoring tool and was the
beginning of what has come to be referred to as "the
internet", or the "digital highway". Advances
in communication technology and infrastructure since that time
continue to increase the reach and influence of the Internet.
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