Dataphone was the first commercial modem. It coud convert digital computer data into anolog signals. These signals could then be sent across a network.

The SABRE was a networking system that connected 65, cities to two IBM 7090 computers for American Airlines. The two IBM 7090s provided information on any flight within three seconds of the request.

JOSS is a time-sharing service. It started on Rand's JOHNNIAC computer.

John van Geen of the Stanford Research Institute improved the acoustically coupled modem so that it could reliably detected bits of data. The acoustically coupled modem connected computers to the telephone network by putting rubber cups over the earphone and microphone of the then standard telephone.

Four nodes, computers connected to a network, were established for the ARPANET. They were: the University of California-Santa Barbara, UCLA, SRI International, and the University of Utah. The purpose of the network was to share resources, sharing of hardware services, software, and databases.

The "blue box," made by Steve Wozniak was a tone generator that could make free phone calls. He sold them in dormitories at the University of California-Berkeley where he was as an undergraduate. If one removed the magnet taped onto the outside of the box, the box would create "off-frequency tones," and would not work. When askeed, users then reported to the police it was simply a music box.

Robert Metcalfe of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center devised the Ethernet, a method of network connection.

Telenet, the first commercial packet-switching network, was born. It linked customers in seven cities. Telenet offered extra services to linking computers.

John Shoch of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center invented a program that searched a network for idle processores. The purpose was to allow the computers to run more efficiently, but it turned out that the the computer "worm," what his program was called, invaded network computers, threatening security.

The NSFNET (formed by the National Science Foundation), linked five supercomputer centers together: Princeton University, Pittsburgh, University of California at San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University. In 1991, the NSF began to allow commercial use of the Internet. In 1995, it left the Internet as a self-supporting industry.

The NSFNET initially transferred data at 56 kilobits per second, much faster than the ARPANET. In 1987, the network was improved, and could transfer1.5 megabits per second. In 1992, the network was upgrades, allowing information to be transmited at about 45 megabits per second.

The first intended network worm was created by Robert Morris, 23-year-old son of a computer security expert for the National Security Agency. It was created difficulties for about 6,000 out of the 60,000 hosts.Motivated by boredom, Morris designed the program to reproduce itself and computer files, eventually filling up and disabling the memory.

In consequesnse, Morris was sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of $10,050.

Tim Berners-Lee of CERN high-energy physics laboratory in Geneva developed HyperText Markup Language (HTML), creating the World Wide Web. It used specifications he developed such as URL (uniform resource locator) and HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). The World Wide Web continues today to serve its purpose, allowing people to work together by combining their knowledge in a global web of hypertext documents. Berners-Lee also designed the first World WideWeb server and browser, which were available to the general public in 1991.