From the
Employment and Learning Computer Lab:
What exactly
is the Internet? It is a set of networks that are linked to one another to help
transmit information from one place to another. Actually, the largest part of
the Internet is private, used by companies, governments and learning
facilities.
The public
part is generally known as the World Wide Web, which is why a user usually puts
“www” in front of the address. This is
actually only a small part of the Internet, but when you work for a company,
you can be hooked into part of the private network via a password supplied by
the organization.
The internet
was started in 1969 by the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) and only
connected a few universities together. The public part was available by 1990,
and twenty years ago, in 1993, the first graphic web browser was created,
making it possible to send pictures and to see images on the desktop. This
became known as “What You See Is What You Get”, or WYSIWYG for short (pronounced
as “wizy-wig”).
At first,
Web addresses ended with .com, or communication, but as the names filled up, it
was broken down into the likes of .org (organization) and .edu (schools or
universities in the States). Nearly every country has their own extension, such
as .ca (Canada), .jp (Japan), .ru (Russia), and de (Germany, or Deutschland). It can make it easier to see where Websites
originate by these extensions.
