internet has its origins in the Cold War
Today, we use the internet for just about everything: ordering food, talking with friends, and working remotely during a pandemic. But did you know the internet has its origins in the Cold War? Concerned the Soviets would bring down U.S. telephone networks during a conflict, researchers at the U.S. Department of Defense and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a closed network via which computers could communicate. By 1969, researchers had connected four computers to what was then called the ARPANET, and in 1971, email allowed computers on the network to communicate with each other. Two years later, mobile communications experienced a new milestone with the first call from a cell phone. That phone weighed over two pounds, had a talk time of just thirty minutes, and took a year to recharge—a far cry from today’s smartphones. Likewise, the internet has dramatically changed over the past half century, expanding from just four computers in 1969 to around four billion users worldwide in 2018.