At the beginning
We take it granted these days, but just 20 years ago, very few people even knew about the internet. A project called Arpanet was started by the United States Defence Department in 1969. The goal of Arpanet was to connect computers together so that they could share information.
For computers to talk to each other and share information, they need to have a shared language. This is called a protocol. It was a difficult job for scientists, but the solutions they came up with turned out to be inexpensive.
This made it possible eventually to offer it to ordinary people - not just government agencies and universities.
A network without a centre
One of the fascinating things about the internet is that nobody controls it. It is a huge network of computers, connecting people in 65 countries. It is thought that a quarter of the people in the world now use it. That number grows every day.