Historical network in England pioneering packet switching
NPL network schematic
Internet history timeline
Early research and development:
Merging the networks and creating the Internet:
Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet:
Examples of Internet services:
1989 (1989 ) : AOL dial-up service provider, email, instant messaging, and web browser 1990 (1990 ) : IMDb Internet movie database 1994 (1994 ) : Yahoo! web directory 1995 (1995 ) : Amazon online retailer 1995 (1995 ) : eBay online auction and shopping 1995 (1995 ) : Craigslist classified advertisements 1995 (1995 ) : AltaVista search engine 1996 (1996 ) : Outlook (formerly Hotmail) free web-based e-mail 1996 (1996 ) : RankDex search engine 1997 (1997 ) : Google Search 1997 (1997 ) : Babel Fish automatic translation 1998 (1998 ) : Yahoo Groups (formerly Yahoo! Clubs) 1998 (1998 ) : PayPal Internet payment system 1998 (1998 ) : Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator 1999 (1999 ) : 2ch Anonymous textboard 1999 (1999 ) : i-mode mobile internet service 1999 (1999 ) : Napster peer-to-peer file sharing 2000 (2000 ) : Baidu search engine 2001 (2001 ) : 2chan Anonymous imageboard 2001 (2001 ) : BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing 2001 (2001 ) : Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia 2003 (2003 ) : LinkedIn business networking 2003 (2003 ) : Myspace social networking site 2003 (2003 ) : Skype Internet voice calls 2003 (2003 ) : iTunes Store 2003 (2003 ) : 4chan Anonymous imageboard 2003 (2003 ) : The Pirate Bay , torrent file host 2004 (2004 ) : Facebook social networking site 2004 (2004 ) : Podcast media file series 2004 (2004 ) : Flickr image hosting 2005 (2005 ) : YouTube video sharing 2005 (2005 ) : Reddit link voting 2005 (2005 ) : Google Earth virtual globe 2006 (2006 ) : Twitter microblogging 2007 (2007 ) : WikiLeaks anonymous news and information leaks 2007 (2007 ) : Google Street View 2007 (2007 ) : Kindle , e-reader and virtual bookshop 2008 (2008 ) : Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) 2008 (2008 ) : Dropbox cloud-based file hosting 2008 (2008 ) : Encyclopedia of Life , a collaborative encyclopedia intended to document all living species 2008 (2008 ) : Spotify , a DRM-based music streaming service 2009 (2009 ) : Bing search engine 2009 (2009 ) : Google Docs , Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service 2009 (2009 ) : Kickstarter , a threshold pledge system 2009 (2009 ) : Bitcoin , a digital currency 2010 (2010 ) : Instagram , photo sharing and social networking 2011 (2011 ) : Google+ , social networking 2011 (2011 ) : Snapchat , photo sharing 2012 (2012 ) : Coursera , massive open online courses 2016 (2016 ) : TikTok , video sharing and social networking
The NPL network , or NPL Data Communications Network , was a local area computer network operated by a team from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in London that pioneered the concept of packet switching .
Based on designs first conceived by Donald Davies in 1965, development work began in 1966. Construction began in 1968 and elements of the first version of the network, the Mark I, became operational in early 1969 then fully operational in January 1970. The Mark II version operated from 1973 until 1986. The NPL network was the first computer network to implement packet switching and NPL was the first to use high-speed links. Its original design, along with the innovations implemented in the ARPANET and the CYCLADES network, laid down the technical foundations of the modern Internet .
