The term Internet, when used to refer to the specific global system of interconnected Internet Protocol (IP) networks, is a proper noun and may be written with an initial capital letter. In common use and the media, it is often not capitalized, viz. the internet. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, but not capitalized when used as an adjective.
Research into packet switching started in the early 1960’s and packet switched networks such as Mark I at NPL in the UK, ARPANET, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the development of protocols for internet working, where multiple separate networks could be joined together into a network of networks.
The first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between Leonard Kleinrock’s Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart’s NLS system at SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969. The third site on the ARPANET was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, and the fourth was the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of future growth, there were already fifteen sites connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971
Although the Internet protocol suite has been used by academia and the military industrial complex since the early 1980s, rapid adoption of its use was driven by events of the late 1980s and 1990s such as more powerful and affordable computers, the advent of fiber optics, the popularization of HTTP and the Web browser, and a push towards opening the technology to commerce. Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown 100-times to reach over one third of the world population, leading to its services and technologies being incorporated into virtually every aspect of contemporary life. The impact of the Internet has been so immense that it has been referred to as the “8th continent”.
Gary Boy 