Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
In this first lesson, let's see where we've come from, so we can better know where we're going.
This video doesn't have any notes.
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
[MUSIC]
0:00
Have you tried using a computer without
emailing to communicate with friends, or
0:05
a web browser to learn about the world or
watch funny cat videos?
0:09
A computer that can't talk to other
computers is a lonely device full
0:13
of information it can't share and without
an easy way to find new information.
0:17
Computers can talk and share things
thanks to the incredible network
0:23
of interconnected computers
called the Internet.
0:26
Thanks to the Internet,
exchanging information is done quickly and
0:30
efficiently.
0:33
In fact,
sharing information between computers
0:34
is the primary job of the Internet.
0:37
However, computers weren't
always connected to each other.
0:40
In the early days of computing,
back in the 1950s, computers were as
0:43
big as a room and had a lot less
power than a mobile phone does today.
0:48
In those days, one computer
couldn't talk to another computer,
0:52
even if it were in the same room.
0:56
But in the 1960s,
scientists in the United States
0:58
started working on a way to connect
computers around the country.
1:02
A government agency called the Advanced
Research Project Agency, also known as
1:06
ARPA, gave lots of money to scientists
to find out a way to make this happen.
1:11
In 1962 the scientists from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1:16
came up with an idea for
a galactic network of computers.
1:21
And in the mid-1960s something known
as packet switching was invented,
1:25
which we'll dive into a little more later.
1:29
In 1969, everything came together and
1:32
the ARPANET, that's what we called
the Internet back then, became a reality.
1:35
It wasn't much.
1:39
A computer at the University
of California Los Angeles
1:41
talked to another computer 562
miles away at Stanford University.
1:44
The computer at UCLA sent the message
log in to the computer at Stanford.
1:49
Only the letters l and o made it
before the entire network crashed,
1:54
but they didn't let this stop them.
1:59
In the 1970s and 80s the Internet grew and
grew connecting computers from
2:01
around the world, but it wasn't until
1991 that the web came along riding on
2:06
the back of the World Wide Network,
created by the Internet.
2:11
So how exactly does the Internet work?
2:16
Good question.
2:18
Let me show you in the next few videos.
2:19
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up