The history of the Internet began with the development of
electronic computers in the 1950s. The public was first introduced to
the concepts that would lead to the Internet when a message was sent over the ARPANet from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock's laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), after the second piece of network equipment was installed at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Packet switched networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks.
In 1982, the Internet protocol suite
(TCP/IP) was standardized, and consequently, the concept of a
world-wide network of interconnected TCP/IP networks, called the
Internet, was introduced.
