The Internet’s First 40 Years: Top Ten Milestones

While 40 years in a person's lifetime is a very long time, the Internet - which turned 40 today - is really only getting started. No birthday celebration for the Internet would be complete without giving recognition to some of the biggest milestones. Still, like just about any 40-year-old guy, the Internet has packed a lot of changes into its life so far. Deciding on which ones is a totally tough call, because the Internet has made such a huge impact on anyone lucky enough to access it.

So here, in chronological order, is my rather arbitrary list of Top Ten Internet Milestones, gleaned largely from a nostalgic look back through the pages of PC World. But as I view things, anyway, it's important to pay tribute to the myriad technologies created over the past four decades to connect people to the Internet - first through modems and then through wireless and cable - as well as to let them access communications like data, radio, and TV in ways once unimaginable. October 29, 1969. Leonard Kleinrock, a UCLA college professor, sends a two-letter message - "lo" - to a computer at Stanford Research Institute. October 13, 1994 - The - eventually to be known as Netscape Navigator - is released as beta code. The Internet is born.

November 6, 1997 - Intel ships a videoconferencing system that runs on the Internet (gasp!) as well as on ISDN phone lines (remember them?) and corporate LANs. February 18, 1998 - The first V.90 modems, enabling Internet access at the then-whopping rate of 56 Kbps, are shipped to stores by 3Com Corp. August 21, 2002 - Together with T-Mobile and HP, Starbucks expands WiFi access to users at 1200 coffee shops throughout the US . Early January, 2009 - Yahoo shows off Connected TV, a platform allowing Web widgets to dock on Internet-connected HDTVs at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Sometime in September 1999 - An Internet-enabled game machine named Dreamcast debuts, pioneering a pathway that will eventually lead to Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's PS3. June 28, 2000 - Metricom rolls out the then-blazingly fast, 128Kbps Ricochet wireless service in Atlanta and San Diego. Early July, 2009 - Internet radio services like Pandora, Blip.fm and Last.fm are saved - albeit temporarily - when recording companies agree to make royalty fees more comparable to those paid by satellite TV services, for example. October 22, 2009 - Microsoft's Internet TV, a new service for accessing Web-based streaming TV shows and movies from directly inside Media Center - finally leaves beta as part of the launch of Windows 7.