90 — VINE 124 How it all began: a brief history of the Internet by Alice Keefer and Tomas Baiget When an article on the history of the Internet was first suggested, our reaction was, “But doesn’t everyone already know how it started?” Having lived the experience (or, perhaps more aptly, having survived it), we had become like veterans of any major event who assume that certain facts will always be maintained in the collective memory. However, we ourselves –from the US and Spain, respectively– have noted with incredu- lity the mistaken answers given by members of the younger generations among our compatriots to such questions as: “In what Southeast Asian country did the US fight a war?” or “Who was Francisco Franco?”. While for some, the answers are burnt into the cerebral circuitry, the younger respondents treat the questions as so many Trivial Pursuit challenges, on the same par as “What team did Brazil beat in the 1962 World Cup?” or “What was the name of the boy actor who played Timmy in the original Lassie series?” While the Internet’s development may lack the emotional charge of the Vietnam War or the Franco dictatorship, it has had a whopping effect on the society in which we live, including com- merce, finance, health, education, politics, leisure, etc. So,we accepted the charge to write a brief historical review of the Internet at a time which very neatly (albeit roughly) coincides with several significant anniversaries: approximately 30 years since the Internet’s inception; 10 years since its liberalisation which opened the floodgates to new users; and 5 years since the incorporation of Web applications into the mainstream. 1 We imagine the article to be addressed to two different demographic groups: 1) those who were working in the information field during the past 5- 10 years and who have seen their professional activities (and perhaps their personal lives) altered by the Internet, and 2) those that have come into the labour market in the past 5 years, to whom the Internet has always been a “given”. We hope that there will be something new for everyone. So join us for a walk, with musical accompaniment, down memory lane. 2 Revolution, Beginnings of [Authors’ note: Those readers that already know that Internet had its beginnings as a defence project may jump to the next section.] Following the Second World War and lasting through to the late 1980’s, a Cold War was fought between the world’s two superpowers —the United States and the now defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. While military build ups, political sparring, and diplomatic manoeuvring were the most obvious activities, there were also many spin-off effects into other areas including some nearer and dearer to the heart of librarians and documentalists, such as research and educa- tion. For example, the USSR’s jump-start of the space race with the launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 sparked a dedicated effort in the United States to boost scientific research. Academic and research libraries, by and large, became beneficiar- ies of the government largesse that resulted from this “knowledge race.” Collections boomed in order to keep up with the production of scientific literature. In order to control the resulting surge in bibliographical data, computers were enlisted to process the information then published as print or microfilmed indexes, and which subsequently would be transformed into databases accessible through the large host services that sprang up in the early 1970s, such as Dialog, SDC-Orbit, ESA- IRS (DialTech), Blaise, BRS, etc. Back in the US..., back in the US..., back in the USSR The 1960s saw several near collisions between the US and the USSR, the most notable being the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, which had Americans scrambling to build and supply bomb shelters in their suburban back yards. Although that particu- lar crisis was defused when the USSR agreed to withdraw its nuclear projectiles from Cuba, patri- otic paranoia persisted. With this mental set as a backdrop and as comput- ers became more prevalent in large government and research installations, the US Defense Depart- ment’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was commissioned to establish a secure