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In this first lesson, let's see where we've come from, so we can better know where we're going.
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[MUSIC]
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Have you tried using a computer without emailing to communicate with friends, or
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a web browser to learn about the world or watch funny cat videos?
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A computer that can't talk to other computers is a lonely device full
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of information it can't share and without an easy way to find new information.
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Computers can talk and share things thanks to the incredible network
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of interconnected computers called the Internet.
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Thanks to the Internet, exchanging information is done quickly and
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efficiently.
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In fact, sharing information between computers
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is the primary job of the Internet.
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However, computers weren't always connected to each other.
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In the early days of computing, back in the 1950s, computers were as
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big as a room and had a lot less power than a mobile phone does today.
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In those days, one computer couldn't talk to another computer,
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even if it were in the same room.
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But in the 1960s, scientists in the United States
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started working on a way to connect computers around the country.
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A government agency called the Advanced Research Project Agency, also known as
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ARPA, gave lots of money to scientists to find out a way to make this happen.
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In 1962 the scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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came up with an idea for a galactic network of computers.
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And in the mid-1960s something known as packet switching was invented,
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which we'll dive into a little more later.
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In 1969, everything came together and
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the ARPANET, that's what we called the Internet back then, became a reality.
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It wasn't much.
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A computer at the University of California Los Angeles
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talked to another computer 562 miles away at Stanford University.
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The computer at UCLA sent the message log in to the computer at Stanford.
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Only the letters l and o made it before the entire network crashed,
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but they didn't let this stop them.
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In the 1970s and 80s the Internet grew and grew connecting computers from
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around the world, but it wasn't until 1991 that the web came along riding on
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the back of the World Wide Network, created by the Internet.
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So how exactly does the Internet work?
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Good question.
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Let me show you in the next few videos.
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