The History of the Internet: From ARPANET to the Eternal September
The internet as we know it – the vast, interconnected network of computers and digital resources that has transformed nearly every aspect of modern life – did not emerge all at once. Instead, it developed through decades of innovation, experimentation, and collaboration among governments, academic researchers, and private entities. This article traces the history of the internet from its genesis in the 1960s ARPANET project to the early 1990s, culminating in an event known to early internet users as the “Eternal September.”
The Genesis: ARPANET and the Cold War Context
The origins of the internet are deeply tied to the geopolitical context of the Cold War. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States sought to maintain its technological superiority over the Soviet Union. One institution founded as a result of this effort was the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now known as DARPA.
By the mid-1960s, ARPA began exploring ways to connect multiple computers across different locations. The goal was both military (ensuring communication could survive a nuclear attack) and scientific (enabling collaboration among researchers working on ARPA-sponsored projects). This led to the creation of ARPANET – short for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network.
ARPANET, born in 1969, was the first operational packet-switching network and the first to implement the protocol suite TCP/IP, which later became the foundation of the modern internet. The first successful message sent over ARPANET occurred on October 29, 1969, between computers at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute. The message was simply “LO” – the first two letters of “LOGIN” – before the system crashed.
At its inception, ARPANET linked four research centers: UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Over the next several years, the network expanded steadily, incorporating more universities and research institutions.
Development of Protocols and Standards
The success of ARPANET prompted further innovation in how computers communicated with one another. Initially, each new network had its own communication protocols, making interoperability a challenge. Recognizing this limitation, researchers Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) in the 1970s.
TCP/IP became the standard networking protocol because of its flexibility, reliability, and support for various types of networks. On January 1, 1983 – a date sometimes referred to as the official “birth of the internet” – ARPANET officially switched to TCP/IP, enabling expanded network connectivity and laying the foundation for the global internet.
Meanwhile, the concept of a “network of networks,” or internetworking, became a reality. Other networks – such as CSNET, BITNET, and later NSFNET – began to emerge and link to each other via the TCP/IP protocol suite.
NSFNET and the Spread Beyond Academia
The National Science Foundation (NSF) played a critical role in further expanding internet infrastructure beyond the narrow academic and governmental context of ARPANET. In 1985, NSF created NSFNET to connect researchers at universities and supercomputing centers. Crucially, NSFNET adopted the TCP/IP protocol as well, ensuring compatibility with ARPANET.
NSFNET’s backbone network offered higher data transmission speeds and more geographic spread than ARPANET, accelerating adoption. By 1990, NSFNET had effectively become the backbone of the internet, and ARPANET was formally decommissioned the same year.
The NSF, while initially focused on academic use, eventually allowed limited commercial use of the network. This decision opened the floodgates for private sector innovation and paved the way for the internet’s commercial revolution in the 1990s.
Usenet, Email, and the Growth of Online Culture
While the infrastructure of the internet was evolving, so too were its early applications and user communities. Among the most influential was Usenet, created in 1979 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis at Duke University. Usenet was a distributed discussion system that allowed users to post messages in newsgroups categorized by topic.
Although not technically part of the ARPANET or NSFNET – Usenet used UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Program) for data transfer – it had profound influence on the development of online culture, fostering everything from serious scientific discussion to internet humor, fan culture, and flame wars.
Another pioneering application was email. While primitive messaging existed in early ARPANET systems, Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing network email in 1971, using the now-familiar “@” symbol to designate message recipients on different hosts. By the late 1980s, email had become a primary means of communication among academics and tech-savvy individuals.
These applications began to cultivate the norms and behaviors of early internet users – often called “netizens” – who were predominantly technical, educated, and engaged in discourse marked by detailed knowledge-sharing, playful experimentation, and informal but rigorous etiquette, often documented in texts like the Netiquette Guidelines (RFC 1855).
The World Wide Web and Graphic Browsers
Another leap occurred in the early 1990s with the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN. Initially proposed in 1989 and demonstrated to the public in 1991, the web was a system for accessing documents over the internet using a combination of hypertext and browser technology.
Berners-Lee also created the first web browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus), and the first web server. The concept of clicking on links embedded in text revolutionized how people navigated information and made the internet vastly more accessible.
In 1993, an easy-to-use graphical browser named Mosaic was released by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Mosaic supported embedded graphics and an intuitive interface, sparking a massive surge of interest in the web. Andreessen later co-founded Netscape Communications, whose Netscape Navigator became one of the first commercially successful browsers.
Usenet, New Users, and the “Eternal September”
As the internet became more accessible in the early 1990s, it began receiving an influx of new users who were less familiar with the existing cultural norms of online communities. Nowhere was this transition more sharply felt than on Usenet.
Every September, when a fresh cohort of university students gained access to the internet and Usenet for the first time, long-time users would brace themselves for an increase in poorly-written posts, redundant questions, and ignorance of informal etiquette. The cultural disruption typically subsided as new users gradually acclimated.
However, in September 1993, a watershed moment occurred: America Online (AOL), then a popular online service provider for home users, began offering Usenet access to all of its customers – who now included non-technical users from diverse demographics.
Unlike the annual influx of students, this deluge of newcomers was continuous. The phenomenon was dubbed the “Eternal September” by longtime users, reflecting the sense that the new user effect never went away. The nature of online discourse shifted permanently, and the internet community began evolving from a small, homogenous, technically-savvy population into the mass medium it is today.
Eternal September signaled the point at which the internet began to lose its insular character and became a mainstream platform for communication and a seedbed for the coming dot-com boom of the mid-to-late 1990s.
Conclusion: From Experiment to Ubiquity
Between the late 1960s and early 1990s, the internet transformed from a Cold War-era research experiment into a rapidly expanding global network. It evolved through stages: ARPANET’s pioneering technologies, TCP/IP’s adoption as a universal protocol, NSFNET’s expansion of the academic network, and the advent of protocols like email and Usenet, culminating in a rich digital culture.
By the early 1990s, the World Wide Web and graphical browsers introduced the general public to the internet, and the commercial sector began to innovate at a rapid pace. Eternal September marked the surrender of early internet homogeneity to the chaotic and democratic force of mass participation.
The history of the internet during this period is not simply one of technological invention, but also of cultural evolution, with vast implications for communication, education, commerce, and society as a whole.
As we look back from the ubiquitous connectivity of today’s internet, the era from ARPANET to Eternal September remains a foundational chapter – a time of creativity, innovation, and the laying of the digital groundwork for the modern world.