A Brief History of the Internet, World Wide Web, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth
Howdy,
The inception and history of the Internet, World Wide Web,
Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi has been a long and complicated one. While overlapping,
each are distinct concepts and things. As such, both their shared and
individual history are worth discussing.
The internet is a means of connecting computers and networks
from across the globe in order to communicate with each other. This communication
between networks allows for all manners of activities which form the usage of
the internet. While the development of the internet was the result of the labor
of many different people, the creation of the internet is generally credited to
Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn in 1974. The initial purpose of the development of
the internet was to be able to connect research networks together to streamline
processes across the United States and Europe. Initially it was used in this
way to connect computing research centers but soon started to be sold for
commercial and personal use. This eventually evolved into how it is prominently
used today for social networking, individual content creation, and video streaming.
While it has come a long way, the internet still essentially functions the
same.
The world wide web refers to a group of webpages which are
located within the internet. Web browsers work by using the internet in order to
access the world wide web. The web was created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 as
a means of allowing scientists to organize and share experiment results amongst
themselves. Tim Berners-Lee was actually the first to create a website on the world
wide web, going online on August 6, 1991. The website is an informational page
about the World Wide Web project. The website can still be accessed at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.
The web has since grown to be more and more mainstream and evolved to focus on
individually created content (made far easier by Web 2.0 features).
While it is fair to refer to the web and the internet separately,
they are undoubtably connected. The world wide web relies on the internet in order
to function and exist. The web is contained within the broader category of the
internet. Conversely, the most prominent usage of the internet is to access the
web and it would not be as relevant as it is today if not for the web.
The history of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are both based on the
same technology. During World War II, Hedy Lamarr developed a technology which
would generate radio frequencies which acted in such a way that would prevent
others from jamming radio signals. This design would evolve into both Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth.
Bluetooth started its development in 1989 by a team in the
Swedish company Ericsson. The name came from an anglicized version of 10th
century Danish King Harald Blåtand last name. The Bluetooth symbol was derived
from a Viking rune merging the initials of that king.
The name for Wi-Fi came about when marketing firm Interbrand
coined the term for trade association the Wi-Fi Alliance in 1999. The original
name for Wi-Fi when it was in development was IEEE 802.11 which was a bit too
cumbersome for general audiences. Phil Belanger, who helped select the new
name, said that the name was invented by Interbrand as a pun on hi-fi (high
fidelity). It is sometimes mistakenly assumed that Wi-Fi is an abbreviation for
Wireless Fidelity, but this is incorrect.
The history of all these technologies are interesting in
their own right as well as intriguing in where they overlap.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zkcqn39/articles/z2nbgk7
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