While conceptual ideas about communication had been ocurring for centuries, its not really until the discovery of electro-magnetism in the 19th century that we can begin to have network communication. Central to our ability to have networks is devising mechanisms that can control and direct electrons so that electrons can be used to carry information. We will not successfully learn the physics of how to do this until about 1950. Between the period 1900-1950 electronic communication, though possible, is mostly inefficient and unreliable. As detailed below, by 1966 we have the means to construct the first version of the Internet and that was first launched in 1969 (the same year we landed on the Moon).

Continuing history of Communications Networks 1900--1966:

• 1904 John Ambrose Fleming patents the first practical electron tube known as the 'Fleming Valve', based on Thomas Edison's patented 'Edison Effect'. This device is the first means of storing electricy.

  
  
  

• 1915 AT&T researchers complete the first transcontinental call from New York to San Francisco and start experimentally transmitting voice across the country via radio.

  
  
  

• 1927 AT&T establishes commercial transatlantic telephone service to London using two-way radio. Calls cost $75 for five minutes.

  
  
  Now it gets fast and furious:

  
  
  

• 1934 The Communications Act of 1934 is passed, it is the first effort to regulate the telephone industry at the federal level.
  
  
• The first electronic digital computer, the Atanasoff-Berry Computer is created by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University with a $7000 grant
  
  
• 1945 Vannevar Bush publishes As We May Think in The Atlantic Monthly. In it he proposes memex, a machine that could store vast amounts of information.
  
  
• 1947 John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain invent the transistor while at Bell Labs. They received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for their work and this small device marked the beginning of global telecommunications, computers, and the Internet.
  
  
• 1956 The first hard disk drive is created at IBM by a team lead by Reynold B. Johnson. The '305 RAMAC' (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) held 5MB of data on fifty 24 inch disks at a cost of about $10,000 per MB.
  
  
• February 1958 In response to the launch of Sputnik the US Department of Defense issues directive 5105.15 establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The directive tasks the agency with 'direction or performance of such advanced projects in the field of research and development...'. The first version of the Internet will be known as ARPANET
  
  
• December 1958 Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes publish Infrared and Optical Masers describing what would later be known as the laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) while at Bell Labs.
  
  
• 1960 The first communication satellite, Echo, was launched and Joseph Licklider publishes Man-Computer Symbiosis.
  
  
• 1961 Leonard Kleinrock publishes the first paper on packet switching networks: 'Information Flow in Large Communication Nets' while at MIT.
  
  
• 1962
  • ATT places the first commercial communications satellite (Telstar I) in orbit.
  • Joseph Licklider and Wesley Clark publish 'On-Line Man Computer Communication' discussing their 'Galactic Network' concept that would allow people to access data from any site connected through a vast network.
  • Joseph Licklider becomes the first head of the computer research program at ARPA.
    
    
• 1963 Doug Engelbart invents the 'X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System', known today as the mouse
  
  
• 1964 Gordon Moore declares that computing power will double every 18 months, a prophecy that holds true today and is known as Moore's Law. Moore and Robert Noyce would later leave Fairchild semiconductor to start Intel in the summer of 1968.
  
  Digital Equipment Corporation releases its PDP-8 computer, the first mass-produced minicomputer.
  
  RAND's Paul Baran publishes 'On Distributed Communications: Introduction to Distributed Communications Network' which outlines packet-switching networks. This paper did discuss nuclear war, and is probably the source of the false rumor that the Internet was built with the goal of withstanding a nuclear attack.
  
  
• 1965 Ted Nelson coins the word 'hypertext'.
  
  Thomas Marill and Lawrence Roberts set up the first WAN (Wide Area Network) between MIT's Lincoln Lab TX-2 and System Development Corporation's Q-32 in California.
  
  
• 1966 Scientists used fiber optics to carry telephone signals for the first time.
  
  Donald Davies coins the term 'packets' and 'packet switching'.
  
  ARPA's Bob Taylor receives funding for a networking experiment that would tie together a number of Universities the agency was funding. With no formal requests and in under an hour Charles Herzfeld agrees to fund what three years later would become the ARPANET the first version of the Internet.
  
  
• 1969 Launch of the internet
  
  ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.