The history of the Internet begins with the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. Initial concepts of packet networking originated in several computer science laboratories in the United States, United Kingdom, and France.^[1] The US Department of Defense awarded contracts as early as the 1960s for packet network systems, including the  development of the ARPANET. The first message was sent over the ARPANET from computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock’s laboratory at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the second network node at Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

Packet switching networks such as ARPANET, NPL network, CYCLADES, Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s using a variety of communications protocols.^[2] Donald Davies first designed a packet-switched network at the National Physics Laboratory in the UK, which became a testbed for UK research for almost two decades.^[3][4] The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, in which multiple separate networks could be joined into a network of networks.

Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was introduced as the standard networking protocol on the ARPANET. In the early 1980s the NSF funded the establishment for national supercomputing centers at several universities, and provided interconnectivity in 1986 with the NSFNET project, which also created network access to the supercomputer sites in the United States from research and education organizations. Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the very late 1980s. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990. Limited private connections to parts of the Internet by officially commercial entities emerged in several American cities by late 1989 and 1990,^[5] and the NSFNET was decommissioned in 1995, removing the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.

In the 1980s, research at CERN in Switzerland by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee resulted in the World Wide Web, linking hypertext documents into an information system, accessible from any node on the network.^[6] Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has had a revolutionary impact on culture, commerce, and technology, including the rise of near-instant communication by electronic mail, instant messaging, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone calls, two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites. The research and education community continues to develop and use advanced networks such as NSF’s very high speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS), Internet2, and National LambdaRail. Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more. The Internet’s takeover of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007.^[7] Today the Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information, commerce, entertainment, and social networking.

• 1974.
  The word “Internet” first appeared in print—in a DARPA-published Request for Comments document on TCP/IP, a new set of communications and networking protocols for managing data transmissions on the new system. TCP/IP is still integral to the present-day Internet. In the meantime, Arpanet was growing fast as more universities, science centers, and army installations got connected.
• 1976.
  Queen Elizabeth of England became the first head of state to send an email. Jimmy Carter followed suit and used email several times while campaigning.
• 1983.
  The Domain Name System (DNS) was invented. Whereas site’s names had been obtuse sequences of letters and numbers, they would now be easy-to-remember names with endings such as .gov, .edu, or .mil.
• 1985.
  The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded construction of Arpanet’s biggest upgrade yet: the NSFNET, a command hub of five supercomputers to serve as highways for all data traffic. NSFNET could transmit data at 56 kilobits per second—slower than some present-day modems.
• 1990.
  Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML and a text browser, as well as a hypertext graphical user interface (GUI) browser. Then he established the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol client and a server via the Internet. These inventions, put together, were the makings of Web pages as we know them today. Lee also made up the term “World Wide Web.” The synonym Information Superhighway would follow in a few more years.
• 1991.
  The NSF allowed commercial enterprises to use the Internet for the first time.
• 1994.
  Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. A whole new world of e-commerce was born.
• 1995.
  The NSF ceased funding the Internet altogether, leaving it a completely self-sustaining industry. Also noteworthy, Sun Microsystems first released Java, still an immensely popular Internet programming language to this day.
• 1998.
  Google opened its first office.
• 2004-2005.
  Facebook was launched in December 2004. YouTube debuted the next year. The social-media revolution had begun.
• 2006.
  Google CEO Eric Schmidt introduced the term “cloud computing” at an industry conference. “The Cloud” would become another synonym for the Internet soon thereafter.
• 2007.
  Mobile and smartphones technologies going commercial and growing rapidly. Consumers would no longer need a personal computer to go online. The Internet would be reachable wherever they could find a wireless signal.

Source: https://intetics.com/blog/a-simple-history-of-the-internet/