Ever wondered about the birth of the internet? It wasn't a single 'eureka!' moment, but rather a gradual evolution! While the World Wide Web (WWW) we use today gained popularity in the early 90s, its roots stretch back much further.
The seed was planted in the late 1960s with ARPANET, a project by the U.S. Department of Defense. In **1969**, the first message was sent over ARPANET between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. This marked a pivotal moment, a tentative step into a connected future.
Over the next few decades, crucial protocols like TCP/IP were developed, allowing different networks to communicate effectively – essentially creating the 'internet' as a network of networks. So, while pinpointing an exact birthdate is tricky, the late 60s and early 70s are generally considered the dawn of the internet age. It was a gradual awakening, leading to the digital world we inhabit today!