How did you get started????

[princessbelle]

This topic has been on my mind the last few days. How did the computer go from the size of a large room to an Ipad and how did the internet come into play. What were the timelines and the statistics.

I found this today, i realize that the beginning of all computers was actually in the 1950s but this is a pretty good general idea of how the internet was established.

Internet Timeline


1969
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.

1972
Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

1973
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in 1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.

1976
Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and running mate Walter Mondale use email to plan campaign events.
Queen Elizabeth sends her first email. She's the first state leader to do so.

1982
The word “Internet” is used for the first time.

1984
Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu.
Writer William Gibson coins the term “cyberspace.”

1985
Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and other information.

1988
A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.

1989
The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.
Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics). Unlike other Internet protocols, such as FTP and email, the Web is accessible through a graphical user interface.

1990
The first effort to index the Internet is created by Peter Deutsch at McGill University in Montreal, who devises Archie, an archive of FTP sites.

1991
Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.
Another indexing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), is developed by Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp.

1993
Mosaic is developed by Marc Andreeson at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). It becomes the dominant navigating system for the World Wide Web, which at this time accounts for merely 1% of all Internet traffic.

1994
The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov.
Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary.
Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

1995
CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access.
Sun Microsystems releases the Internet programming language called Java.
The Vatican launches its own website, www.vatican.va.

1996
Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30 million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S. households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.

1997
On July 8, 1997, Internet traffic records are broken as the NASA website broadcasts images taken by Pathfinder on Mars. The broadcast generates 46 million hits in one day.
The term “weblog” is coined. It’s later shortened to “blog.”

1998
Google opens its first office, in California.

1999
College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that allows users to swap music over the Internet.
The number of Internet users worldwide reaches 150 million by the beginning of 1999. More than 50% are from the United States.
“E-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly spreads.
MySpace.com is launched.

2000
To the chagrin of the Internet population, deviant computer programmers begin designing and circulating viruses with greater frequency. “Love Bug” and “Stages” are two examples of self-replicating viruses that send themselves to people listed in a computer user's email address book. The heavy volume of email messages being sent and received forces many infected companies to temporarily shut down their clogged networks.
The Internet bubble bursts, as the fountain of investment capital dries up and the Nasdaq stock index plunges, causing the initial public offering (IPO) window to slam shut and many dotcoms to close their doors.
America Online buys Time Warner for $16 billion. It’s the biggest merger of all time.

2001
Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music. The file-swapping company says it is developing a subscription-based service.
About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.
Wikipedia is created.

2002
As of January, 58.5% of the U.S. population (164.14 million people) uses the Internet. Worldwide there are 544.2 million users.
The death knell tolls for Napster after a bankruptcy judge ruled in September that German media giant Bertelsmann cannot buy the assets of troubled Napster Inc. The ruling prompts Konrad Hilbers, Napster CEO, to resign and lay off his staff.

2003
It's estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music files each month.
Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It accounts for about half of all emails. In December, President Bush signs the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM Act), which is intended to help individuals and businesses control the amount of unsolicited email they receive.
Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.
Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It accounts for about half of all emails.
Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.

2004
Internet Worm, called MyDoom or Novarg, spreads through Internet servers. About 1 in 12 email messages are infected.
Online spending reaches a record high—$117 billion in 2004, a 26% increase over 2003.

2005
YouTube.com is launched.

2006
There are more than 92 million websites online.

2007
Legal online music downloads triple to 6.7 million downloads per week.
Colorado Rockies' computer system crashes when it receives 8.5 million hits within the first 90 minutes of World Series ticket sales.
The online game, World of Warcraft, hits a milestone when it surpasses 9 million subscribers worldwide in July.

2008
In a move to challenge Google's dominance of search and advertising on the Internet, software giant Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.
In a San Fransisco federal district court, Judge Jeffrey S. White orders the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a Web site that discloses confidential information. The case was brought by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, located in the Cayman Islands, after a disgruntled ex-employee allegedly provided Wikileaks with stolen documents that implicate the bank in asset hiding, money laundering, and tax evasion. Many web communities, who see the ruling as unconstitutional, publicized alternate addresses for the site and distributed bank documents through their own networks. In response, Judge White issues another order to stop the distribution of bank documents.
Microsoft is fined $1.3 billion by the European Commission for further abusing its dominant market position, and failing to comply to their 2004 judgment, which ordered Microsoft to give competitors information necessary to operate with Windows. Since 2004, Microsoft has been fined a total of $2.5 billion by the Commission for not adhering to their ruling.

Sources for this timeline include International Data Corporation, the W3C Consortium, Nielsen/NetRatings, and the Internet Society.

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0193167.html

Here is my question.....

What is your story. What was your first computer on the internet and when did you buy it. When did you first use one at work or at home. Do you think it has been a asset to your job and personal life?

What is YOUR timeline and statistics????

[princessbelle]

It's really hard to remember "way back when" but i think this is mine pretty much....

Early 1980s I purchased a Brother Word Processor...
I worked from home typing and transcribing Q and L clearances for the government. Very interesting job. Loved it and it allowed me to stay home with my babies and continue working. It was a tiny little thing and just showed about 8 lines in the screen. Had the printer built in but you couldn't print and then type at the same time. They took turns.

Early 1990s i ended up working for a computer company, which has since gone out of business i think.
It was a Big computer company. Most of the computers were still filling up the size of rooms and business was booming. There were a few PCs out there and i had one. It had a black screen and orange letters. I did have my choice, that one or the one with green letters. Ugggg it was awful. They had so much money that they would spend it ridiculously. I would hold customer appreciation banquets and was given a Visa and was told "Money is no object, let our customers know we appreciate them". And boy i did. From renting out the Aquarium in Chattanooga to renting out golf courses with gourmet meals with ice sculptures, our customers were treated right. Huge contracts for computer upkeep back then. Major bucks. I was in charge of organizing the repair side of the company regarding billing and bookkeeping. Ironically, i mostly kept up with everything with a green ledger on paper. We did have email there, it was the old "All in 1" email system. Surely that is not still around. LOL

In the mid 1990s i bought my first PC for home.
It was a HP and the reason i wanted it was to play chess on it. My brother had bought one and the game had the chess pieces that came to life. It was so cool. My oldest son wanted to "get on the internet". I remember telling him no. It scared me and i just bought them games that were those huge floppy discs and we did that for years.

In the late 1990s i relented and we hooked up to the old dial up internet that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.
The rest is history.

[Kobi]

I worked in a hospital. We started computerizing some things that the powers felt were important. Then progressed to a hospital wide figure it out for yourself system. Finally got internet access in the late 90's which was a god send. Saved me from taking work home to look up resources I needed.

Personally I started out with web tv - no harddrive just internet access via the microsoft network. I liked it. Learned how to do a lot of stuff I never would have with a PC.

Had my first PC built for me while in Canada with the exes specifications. Oy.
Finally bought my Dell desk top and lap top.

Someday, when I get bionic eyes, might like tablets and iphones stuff.

[girl_dee]

i worked at a bank, i was in charge of data processing during the time we went from huge big IBMs to PC. Before the IBM we had card files. YES your banking info was written on a passbook in front of you, and manually added and subtracted. We also kept a card file of accounts.

Since no one wanted to go to our new system, "microfiche" i one day removed the big wooden boxes of card files. The tellers were pissed but moved on.

Over the course of 13 years we went from index card files to large magnetic tapes that would take up an entire vault for one day's processing, when i left in 1999 we were on laser discs that you could fit in your pocket. i feel lucky to be there during the computer revolution, i got to train everyone on how to use them (i was new to them myself but very computer savvy) and even set up our online banking program. ATM's were new too, as well as debit cards and many other perks of that era.

i don't remember when i got my first computer at home but i remember it was $4500.00. i bought it with a bonus check i received for helping to set up the new bank PC system, how ironic. It was a Packard Bell and the monitor weighed 3 tons.

i went online when i ran my own legal courier business in 1999, (AOL and that sound of cranking up) and been online ever since. The first song i downloaded took hours. i was happy for that! Now, it's seconds.

i love technology and fun gadgets!

[Sparkle]

Interesting Topic!

My father was an electrical engineer with General Electric in the 70s; he was fascinated with computers and he turned the unfinished basement in their first house into his computer building workshop. It looked like NASA clips from the 60s down there -- the whole room filled with enormous metal boxes, with bleeping round graphed glass screens, and big dials and lots switches, and open circuit boards and wires spewing everywhere. And with no discernible purpose! I always wondered what the hell those machines "did". It was all a bit mad scientist, I'd not have been surprised to have found steaming beakers with green boiling liquids attached by big rubber tubes to some of those contraptions.

But his passion and curiosity got him transferred to GE's business computer division in the early 80s, developing hardware, and doing early system operation software coding. Then he took over the extra bedroom with actual personal computers and stacks of coding books.

We had some of the earliest home computers on the market
the VIC 20 and later a Commodore 64 and a 128. And those old printers that punched out rolls and rolls of paper with the perforated edges!

My sister and I played games on them, in the odd half hour here and there that my father wasn't in front of them.

My father was a pretty unpleasant person and a terrible parent. (for many many reasons having nothing to do with computers) But he was obsessed with computers and spent pretty much every waking moment working on them, both at work and at home. He approached parenting as though it were a computer engineering problem and was genuinely perplexed when we didn't respond as we "should" - perplexed was followed by frustrated followed by enraged - usually in short order. He literally compared us to computers, disfavor-ably. We had a tumultuous relationship and I was left with a HUGE distaste for computers.

I used them in high school and college, first to learn "keyboarding" and later for the most basic word processing of papers and presentations. While some students had personal computers, they were still pretty rare, I used computers in communal study spaces and the library.

Of course by the time I was working in an office environment in 96ish there was a computer on every desk. It is funny to think about how clunky, one-directional and archaic they seem now.

I didn't get my own personal computer until 1998, the rest is...from that point on, history.

[ruffryder]

Oh wow! It has evolved for sure! LOL

I would say I used it first in school. Macs and IBMs were popular in the 90s for school use. I studied Dos and Linux Operating Systems in college. I was getting my associates in Accounting and I remember mostly everything written in journal form. I had one class out of my two year degree that was based on accounting for computers. My other computer class was Intro to Computers.

My first computers were an old IBM and an iMac Bondi Blue and I was using very slow dial up internet. On these computers I enjoyed games and solitare and then I found chat rooms and did some yahoo and aol chat. Found B-F.com then Myspace and LiveJournal. LOL and all is history from there. BFP and FB - the future. Had a couple other mac computers since and a couple different lap tops and love wireless internet now! I've owned some websites and learned some PHP and HTML. I got my bachelors degree all online! I've been able to chat with people around the world and interact virtually. My jobs since I got out of high school have involved using various computer programs, email, spreadsheets, power point, etc. I am able to interact with both clients and my bosses through the internet and computer emails and calendars. I am amazed with how it all has evolved and how phones play a huge role in internet connection now. Next, I would like to possibly start a business on FB and learn some phone applications and widgets.

[*Anya*]

Great thread Belle!

I first started using a computer at work in 1985. I think I basically used it for word processing.

My long-term ex and I got our first for the home in 1988. It was a big-ass thing and cost us about 3K.

I remember those giant floppy discs, being on aol and I loved playing the game Myst.

[not2shygrrl]

What a memory this has brought back

I worked in Arlington Va for a life insurance company. I was low on the totem pole office assistant and we had a WANG system! Now the woman who was the geek from WANG was OMG I was totally crushing and lusting after her! Affectionately I called her the WANG~BANGER and often would sabotage our system to get a "weekly " visit from her...hehehe

We finally did go out and of course I wished I still at the time was able to have my daydreams of her (which didn't exist after we went out). I just was not into her weirdness, her and revving her engine (an automatic) at stop signs and red lights in her gold Trans Am with a black eagle painted on the hood! We stayed friends but my fantasies were blown out of the water!! After that she was just the Wang lady......

LOL good memories though, and I am where I am in part because of all of my experiences!! Thanks for provoking this memory! <smile>

[Ginger]

Way way back in L.A., I had a job from 11 p.m.to 7 a.m. searching for checks on a microfilm and taking "photos" of them that I piled in a basket. I finished my work after about an hour and used the rest of the night napping and rotating among the big empty room, trying out everyone's desk and IBM Selectric typewriter. At home, I put my little Corona typewriter on a pedestal and stood typing.

Shortly after that, I moved to New York and lived with a lover in graduate school who had a computer in 1987. She was the first person I knew with a computer; how early you made each leap in home technology was more class based, then; or at the very least, income based—our incomes were very different. (We went to Europe for two months. She spent her allowance. I spent my life's savings.) Anyway, she had a big clunky computer which seemed amazingly high-tech at the time. I can't remember the brand but I remember she had a dot matrix printer. So I had access to computers earlier than I might have, on my own. Thank you, my long ago Ex!

When we broke up, I lived alone, but eventually moved in with someone else, and had the money to buy my own, first computer.

Again, I don't remember the brand, but I remember using WordPerfect, the precursor to MicroSoft Word.

Then I made a huge leap with a new Gateway, and the big box that was black-and-white like a Guernsey cow sat in our living room like a shrine to the future.

And that's when I got my first Internet email account, AOL, some time in the late nineties. A lot of people over 45 or so still have their AOL accounts; it's like a boomer badge of honor, and I've been sneered at for holding on to it, but my family and old old friends would get confused if I let it go.

Anyway, here I am in 2012 using the MacBook Air they gave me at work, and I also have a Dell PC that is woefully in need of replacement. I'm planning to get an IMac in 2013. I marvel at the changes in how we write, process information and correspond, that technology has caused.

[chefhmboyrd]

When I was in Chicago (late 80' early 90's) we had some computerized warehouse inventory tools (picking packing shipping)
it was all proprietary software
then when i came to Nashville i rarely used them until AOL in the mid 90's
didn't own one of my own though
it wasn't until i started working for Ryder in 2003 that i used them everyday.
eventually got one of my own
now i have more computer power in my house then most 3rd world countries.

i recently earned an Associate's in IT and going back for my Bachelor's in Jan.

[Teddybear]

lets see i trained in college to b a coputer programmer and learned basic, rpg, rpgII and rpgIII aloing with cobal and cobal2. was told we had to learn basic to learn the other langugages however we would never use it since computers were math based and we would need to know a math based programing language. about half way with school lotus 123 came out and the rest is history as they say.

I had a Tandy 101 however we didnt have internet as a matter of fact it was a tape drive and we had a old cassette tape recordered hooked up to it for the programs.

the next computer i had was the qualcomm on my truck that is kinda like a word processor from back in the day now it is a touch screen that i HATE

my first internet computer if u can call it that was Web-TV. I loved it i had a huge tv and could see it from my couch without have to squint to read it

[ruby_woo]

We took computer classes in elementary school. I loved computer day! We used those old Apple computers to learn typing, and played games like Oregon Trail and Math Munchers.

When I was about 11 or 12, my dad bought a computer that ran on DOS, and my sister and I played this silly Barbie fashion game, and a Carmen San Diego game. Eventually we got AOL, and my sister and I used to troll the AOL chatrooms until my parents figured out the parental controls. We figured out how to undo the parental controls, and my mom decided to move the computer from the basement to the dining room, where she could watch us from the kitchen or living room.

Our family would get into epic fights over use of the internet vs. use of the phone, and who wanted to use what and when. Oh, dial-up...

In high school, we used the Mac computers Ruffryder pictured in the school library, and to work on the yearbook layout. This was about 1999 I think? High school teachers were still resisting the internet as a research tool at the time, and emphatically told us that we HAD to cite actual books in our research papers, they did not want us using just the internet.

I received an iBook as a high school graduation present, and have been using Mac laptops at home ever since.

[Corkey]

Mom had a Commodore 64 keyboard. She played pong on it for days.

I didn't get a computer until 1998. I had no idea how to use it but I played around till I figured it out. I am no techie. When in 1999 my company went to computer generated reports and keyless entry I learned a few programs. I had a PC at home. When I moved from Ca, I left it to my ex's daughter. We now have Mac Pro's and we plug along nicely.

[PaPa]

Wow...what a loaded question, princessbelle. I will see how well I can tackle the answers....

1980 or 1981...I took a computer math class at the beginning of 9th grade. The schools computer was one preformed piece with monitor and keyboard. It had a modem which sat on the top and it had two holes in which the telephone receiver went. We would dial a number for a college nearby and hook up to their computer system which took up a whole room. We were then able to learn computer programming for that time. Each line began with a base ten number in sequence and we could insert go to commands if ___ then go to ____ commands...etc...I don't remember a whole lot of that but then again it was 31 or 32 years ago!

Fast forward to the mid 80's I had experience with a commodore 64 that my brother purchased. Later in the 80's my brother tore apart a premoulded one piece computer and designed his own. He had written to IBM and Apple and received schematics. He played around with it in the garage until he had a useful computer for what he wanted to use it for. Today, my brother has his own business and deals with high temperature extreme hardware for companies like Boeing, Lockheed, and the military.

Early 90's I was in college and learned Word Perfect, Quattro 1, 2, 3, and other programs.

Mid 90's I bought a Brother Word Processor for my own needs.

I then advanced to a Dell, an HP and today I am still a faithful buyer of HP products. It meets my needs and has never left me stranded.

[Martina]

I don't recall the types of computer. I was in grad school and using the school's computers. Many universities had a gopher. It seemed like accessing the wealth of the world to navigate to a university's gopher and be able to download docs on every subject.

I recall being able to make a few commands and see everyone on the network. Anybody could. Then you could email from the command line if you wanted to.

We had a text only gay forum at the University of Michigan -- called Confer. We mostly knew each other in real life. We argued so ferociously on there and then would run into each other at the library, cafe or a party and be so pleasant and friendly. One of those guys became a famous economist. One a porn star for a while. It was the good old days when gay men and lesbians talked to each other.

I didn't have a computer of my own for a long time, but I remember occasionally using a roommate's and dialing in to MichNet for access. I stored alot of my research on my server space, and sometimes needed it at night for something. Usually I'd go to the computer center, which was open 24/7, but sometimes the snow was too deep. Wow. Haven't thought of that stuff in forever.

[Ginger]

I forgot to say, I taught computer applications in a high school in the late nineties, and took two online courses: computer hardware repair and website design. Both of course, full of concepts that are hilariously outdated by now.

[Medusa]

Anyone remember the old Commodore64 BASIC programs?

10Print I Love you
20Print I Love you more
30Print I Love you the most!

[JustJo]

At the risk of showing my age....

In middle school we had a computer class that included punch cards....and the whole "go to" programming... I remember little except that it seemed a long and tedious way to get an answer that I could calculate faster in my head.

In the early 80s I worked at a university law school on a work-study job....on a Tandy 64 with the giant, truly floppy, floppy disks....

I worked as a temp in the late 80s...Lotus 1.2.3, WordPerfect....

Now I work remotely....couldn't function without MS Outlook and MS Project (which I have a love/hate relationship with), MS Word and Excell....

I'm still super low-tech, but I use computers as second nature all day long.

[Soft*Silver]

My mother wanted me to go to college to become a writer. She bought me a brothers typewriter with a corrector key on it, that also had word processing features. I was hot shit! Then a friend of mine told me about the computer he had just purchased and rained on my parade. Butt head! LOL

I fought getting a computer but the butch I was married to for 7 years was computer savvy. He was a scheduler in a plant and his job had been computerized. I remember we went computer shopping together and I couldnt understand the differences. There were alot of numbers being thrown out there in the descriptions (I still feel this way when I go to buy a new one!) They were all the same color. And the bigger the screen, the better the quality.

until it became, the smaller the screen, the more expensive it was.

and then there was the battle over mac or PC. I bought one of those colored Macs because I wanted something other than putty colored. I have ADD so I couldnt stick with the transition and sold it on ebay.

Oh yes..ebay. I remember when it was FUN. You could go on there and find obscure used things that would have taken you a lifetime of antiquing or garage saleing to find. Now its all businesses and frankly, most of it is new junk.

I started out on aol and ran up a few credit cards. Being online was $4.95 an hour. And the temptation to play around on your partner was suddenly VERY easy. Was it cheating if you cyberfisted? So many relationships broke up over this. I was so loyal to my butch. It wasnt easy. She proved how hard it was by cheating on me with a cyber fling, who together, drained my inheritance, took my daughter's college fund and put my family farm into foreclosure. A few months later she tells me she the Other Woman did the same thing to her that she had done to me and wanted to come back. Oh yes. Cyber affairs shouldnt have the same consequences she said. I said, maybe not, but breaking my heart regardless of how, does.

Obviously we didnt get back together.

My daughter went to a upper middle class school system for her kindergarten year. They bragged about how they got the kids started on computers right from the beginning of their school life. I moved her to a blue collar school system for 1st grade, and by week two, I had a call from the new teacher. She said my daughter was failing and wanted to know if she came from an inner city school. NO> I said< she came from (fill in the upper middle class school's name). She said "ah, thats why. They spend so much time teaching kids the new computer language and how to navigate that they dont bother teaching them the alphabet and basic things like numbers and colors."

After my butch husband left me for a cyber affair, I started dating on the internet. I dated ALOT. and I dated in person, not just pretend dates. I also remember Women Only rooms and how we worked so hard to keep men from stealthing into our private domains. And how there were families that developed, and they werent always part of the leather world but often had that root somewhere in their history.

I remember hearing about online college classes and degrees and thought that would never fly. It would never be seen as reputable. hah. I was wrong!

My daughter at the age of 7 could maneuver on the computer better than I could for the first year. In fact, that computer sat in my bedroom for a good six months before I would even get on it. I was scared. Oh, and I had to take out a bank loan of $3500 to get it. But I got a free printer with it.

I ran social service programs and was a therapist as well. Handwriting notes remained more personal and reflective than entering them on the computer. But the agencies made me do that shift. They could also monitor my every move. And they did. I had to record what I was doing every 15 minutes, and they could check if what i said was true. Dammit.