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Networking
Working on the SAGE system spurred a generation of
computer scientists and engineers to think about
computers in new ways. They came to believe that
computers could be interactive communications
devices as well as calculators. The goal of computer
networking lay behind some of the most important
technical developments of the 1960s and 1970s. This
animation describes the evolution of networking
technology.
Transcript:
The first computers could be used only by one
person, in one place. In order to make computers
more accessible, scientists developed ways to let
them switch from user to user and task to task. This
was called time-sharing. Many businesses and
academic centers built large time-sharing systems.
Scientists wanted to connect these systems into
networks, but each spoke a different language. The
solution was to build a special kind of computer to be
a partner for every "host" computer system. Each
host talked to its partner, and the partners talked to
each other. Another obstacle to networking was that
if every message had a whole line dedicated to it, as
in a telephone call, then huge traffic jams would
occur. So every message was divided into small
parts, or packets, that traveled through the network
independently. Many packet-switched networks
sprang up, but they could not connect to each other
because they did not share a common language.
TCP/IP was developed to be that common language,
enabling thousands upon thousands of networks to
be linked together in the vast network of networks we
call . . . the Internet. |
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