1956 -- United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense, for science and technology advancement in the military.
1962 -- Paul Baran's paper "On Distributed Communications Networks" became the architectural ground work for ARPAnet.
1967 -- The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Symposium on Operating Principles -- plan for a nationwide network.
1968 -- Network presentation to the ARPA.
1969 -- ARPANET commissioned by the Department of Defense for research into networking.
1970 -- Norman Abramson, University of Hawaii, developed ALOHAnet. ARPANET begin using Network Control Protocol (NCP).
1971 -- ARPANET expanded to 15 nodes (23 hosts)
1972 -- Demonstration of networking technology Creation of the Internetworking Working Group to standardize networking protocols. Invention of email program.
1973 -- International connections to the ARPANET.
1974 -- Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BB&N) opens Telnet
1975 -- Defense Communications Agency (the present Defense Information Systems Agency) took over the operational management of Internet.
1976 -- Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) developed by AT&T's Bell Labs.
1977 -- University of Wisconsin began to provide email to more than 100 computer science researchers using UUCP.
1979 -- USENET established using UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Program).
1981 -- A Computer Science research computer network (CSNet) provided nationwide access to email. The City University of New York started a cooperative network, BITNET ("Because It's Time NETwork"). French Telecom started Minitel (Teletel) in France.
1982 -- Internetworking Working Group established the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP).
1983 -- University of Wisconsin developed name server. CSNet (Computer Science Network) was linked to the ARPAnet. IBM PC developed.
1986 -- NSFNET created.
1990 -- ARPANET cease to exist.
1991 -- Wide Area Information Service (WAIS) released by Thinking Machines Corporation. Gopher released by University of Minnesota. The National Research and Education Network (NREN) established.
1992 -- World Wide Web released by CERN.
1993 -- The Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) created to provide specific Internet services. White House went online.
1994 -- Communities and schools start to connect directly to the Internet. U.S. Senate and House provide information servers.