Did The British Invent The Internet?
By Tom Foremski - February 8, 2010
Interesting article on BBC News about early British computer pioneers.
By splitting data into packets and threading them on the same line, the carrying capacity of that link could be boosted and the whole network made more powerful.
Roger Scantlebury, who worked with Dr Davies, presented the ideas about "packet switching" to a conference in the US, where they were picked up by the creators of the nascent Arpanet, the fledgling internet.
Does that mean Britain invented the internet?
"Yes and no," said Mr Scantlebury. "Certainly the underlying technology of the internet, which is packet switching, we did invent."
British researchers also worked on hyperlinks, another crucial Internet technology, way back in the early 1970s.
David Yates was project manager of a program called Scrapbook which rolled together word processing, e-mail and hypertext - a system that incorporated many elements of the World Wide Web.
Scrapbook went live on 28 April 1971...Scrapbook helped people across the 28 acres of the NPL campus collaborate or projects without having to sit next to each other.
Clearly, the British had developed many of the technologies that went into the Internet. And Tim Berners-Lee, is a Brit and he invented the world wide web...
So maybe the British did invent the Internet but with typical British modesty, didn't want to blow their own horn. At least until now.
Please see: BBC News - Alan Turing and the Ace computer
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Comments (6)
Tom:
British work on Packet Switching was done independently of American effort, led by Paul Baran at RAND (and predates it.
You Brits get the web and even the computer. The telephone, telephone netowrk, and the Internet are US Intellectual Property and Inventions.
Posted: February 8, 2010 1:18 PM
Thanks Chris. Let's just say 'we all' invented it, including Mr Gore :)
Posted: February 8, 2010 2:25 PM
Tom, this has come from a brilliant BBC series The Virtual Revolution, on how the internet is changing global politics and the world.
I've just been writing about how us Brits are good at invention but poor at commercialisation compared to the US http://bit.ly/acw6NI.
My favourite quote from a former Design Council chair is “If Bill Gates had been British he’d be running the largest software company in Guildford (small market town in S England) by now.”
Posted: February 8, 2010 3:51 PM
Another cool Brit invention was the "subroutine", where the "program counter" is stored on a stack so code can be executed and return to where it came from - enabling the sharing of code between parts of a program. Pretty cool idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroutine
Posted: February 9, 2010 12:59 AM
Al Gore invented the legislation that allowed the public funding of the internet expansion to everyone. It was a gift to ourselves which we paid for.
His suggestion now is to use it for the common good:
The Hour of Choosing Has Arrived/
Here Are Your Tools
One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun
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Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune's bones dissolve
Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly
Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning's celebration
Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups
Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung
The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools
Al Gore
..............
The Goracle -- Al Gore, the Internet and the Future of American Politics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jose-antonio-vargas/the-goracle----al-gore-th_b_390892.html
These days, his two long-time interests are crossing paths. The man (Gore) and the message (our climate crisis) has finally met the medium (the Web) that can effectively help spread the word around, from one social network to another. To hear skeptics such as former vice president candidate Sarah Palin tell it, the global warming debate is far from over. To Gore, however, there is no more debate -- just an opportunity for fact-driven, practical-minded individuals to mobilize around the cause.
"You know, Web 2.0, which may gave way to Web 3.0 -- social networks, basically -- holds the great promise of empowering enough individuals who share that broad public interest in an issue like global warming to organize and express themselves with sufficient intensity and focus to overcome the special interests. We're already seeing that begin to happen, and I'm encouraged by it," Gore told me recently inside the headquarters of Current TV, his Internet-meets-television outfit in San Francisco, located just a few blocks from the offices of Twitter.
Posted: February 14, 2010 9:01 AM
Certainly BASIC went public with Orthodox SynagOGue of London, Impatuse behind Commodore, Work of Dedicated Assembly of Brits WorldWide..
However, breaking telcos' to install high speed equipemnt for FREe Service was Us thangie. Breaking Thru Traditional Commerical Users, Providers Now Entice public with Eye BALL Candy thats just about ready to break cable into mere internet connection for Most. Vote: 2 Americans, 1.8 British, 8 STeWie. only due to fact BT Has NO Ears.
Posted: February 17, 2010 11:02 AM