A short history of the internet
From four university computers to five billion people — the ten moments that built the connected world, narrated.
ARPANET sends its first message
October 1969. A student in Los Angeles types L, then O — and the machine crashes. Those two letters were the first message ever sent on the ARPANET.
Email is invented
Two years later, email arrives. Ray Tomlinson needed a symbol no name would ever contain, and picked the at sign. It stuck forever.
TCP/IP becomes the standard
In 1983 every connected network agreed to speak one language: TCP/IP. Separate networks became one inter-network — the internet.
The Web is proposed
In 1989 a physicist at CERN proposed linking documents with clickable references. His boss wrote three words on the memo: vague, but exciting.
Mosaic browser launches
Mosaic put images next to text in 1993, and the web stopped being a tool for scientists and became a place for everyone.
Google is founded
By 1998 the web was huge and unfindable. Two students built a search engine that ranked pages by who linked to them. It worked a little too well.
Social networks take off
Around 2004 the web learned names and faces. For the first time, the network was about who you know, not just what you know.
The iPhone ships
In 2007 the internet left the desk and moved into two billion pockets. Always on, always with you.
Four billion people online
By 2018, more than half of all living human beings were connected to the same network. No technology had ever spread that far, that fast.
AI goes mainstream
And in 2023 the newest way to use the internet became simply talking to it. Fifty-four years from two letters to five billion voices.
Watch it explain itself
Every step above is narrated aloud. Play it, or open it in the editor and make it yours — no account needed.