The History Highway

A 21st-century Guide to Internet Resources

Dennis A. Trinkle, Dorothy Auchter, Scott A. Merriman, Todd E. Larson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315289595
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Labour Economics
• Index: Economics

Save yourself and your students hours of research time. Now extensively revised and expanded, "The History Highway" is widely recognized as the one essential tool for students, teachers and researchers seeking a reliable guide to history sites on the web. "The History Highway" offers the broadest, most current coverage of the astonishing amount of historical information available on the Internet: provides detailed, easy-to-use, and up-to-date information on more than 3000 web sites; covers U.S. and World history and all sub-fields; features ten new chapters, with coverage of futurism, environmental history, immigration history, and Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history; all sites have been thoroughly checked by specialists in the relevant field of history; the best sites in each field are clearly identified; hard cover and paperback editions include a CD of the entire contents with live links to sites; and e-book version with live links to sites is in preparation.

Part I
Getting Started

Chapter 1
The Basics

Dennis A. Trinkle

History of the Internet

Since this book is directed at those interested in history, it seems sensible to begin with a brief history of the Internet itself. The story of the Internet’s origins is as varied, complex, and fascinating as the information the Net contains. Ironically, the Net began as the polar opposite of the publicly accessible network it has become. It grew out of the Cold War hysteria surrounding the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. Amid paranoia that the United States was losing the “science race,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense to establish an American lead in science and technology applicable to the military. After helping the United States develop and launch its own satellite by 1959, the ARPA scientists turned much of their attention to computer networking and communications. Their goal was to find a successful way of linking universities, defense contractors, and military command centers to foster research and interaction, but also to sustain vital communications in case of nuclear attack. The network project was formally launched in 1969 by ARPA under a grant that connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern United States—UCLA, Stanford, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The network went online in December 1969. The age of computer networks was born.

In the early 1970s, it became clear to the initial developers of the ARPANET that the system was already stretching past its Cold War origins. Nonmilitary research institutions were developing competing networks of communication, more and more users were going online, and new languages were being introduced that made communication difficult or impossible between networks. To resolve this problem, the Defense Advanced Project Agency (which had replaced ARPA) launched the Internetting Project in 1973. The aim was to create a uniform communications language (a protocol, as the rules governing a computer language are termed) that would allow the hundreds of networks being formed to communicate and function as a single meganetwork. In an amazing display of scientific prowess comparable to the Apollo program, this crucial step in the development of the information superhighway was accomplished in a single year when Robert Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf introduced the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This protocol made possible the connection of all the various networks and computers then in existence and set the stage for the enormous expansion of the Internet.

Over the next decade, the Department of Defense realized the significance and potential of the Internet, and nonmilitary organizations were gradually allowed to link with the ARPANET. Commercial providers like CompuServe then began making the Internet accessible for those not connected to a university or research institution. The potential for profiting from the Internet fueled dramatic improvements in speed and ease of use.

The most significant step toward simplicity of use came with the introduction of the World Wide Web (Internet), which allows interactive graphics and audio to be accessed. The World Wide Web was the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, who created a computer language called hypertext that made possible the interactive exchange of text and graphic images and allowed almost instantaneous connection (linking) to any item on the Internet. Berners-Lee was actually developing this revolutionary language as the Internet was expanding in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was only with the introduction of an easy-to-use Web browser (as the software for interacting with the Web is called) that the Web became widely accessible to the average person. That first browser—Mosaic—was made available to the public by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1991. Three years later, Mosiac’s creator, Marc Andreessen, introduced an even more sophisticated browser that allowed the interaction of sound, text, and images—Netscape Navigator. The next year Microsoft launched a browser of its own—Internet Explorer.

Today, there are many software options for exploring the Internet and access can be purchased through thousands of national and local service providers. A user need no longer be a military researcher or work at a university to “surf the Net.” There are now more than 100 million users logging onto the Internet from the United States alone. Tens of thousands of networks now are connected by TCP/IP, and the Internet forms a vast communication system that can legitimately be called an information superhighway.

Uses of the Internet

This section of Part I will explain the most useful features of the Internet for those interested in history. It will discuss sending and receiving e-mail, reading and posting messages to Usenet newsgroups and discussion lists, logg...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I. Getting Started
• Part II. Internet Sites for Historians
• Glossary
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index