In what year was telephone lines connected to computers to develop the internet?

Answer 1

Connection of telephone lines to computers and the development of the internet have nothing directly to do with each other.

The first computers interconnected via telephone lines, in 1958, were the AN/FSQ-7 computers of the USAF's SAGE air defence system (52 computers at 26 sites) using custom designed MODEMs (each about 8 feet tall, 5 feet wide, and 4 feet deep) on a network of dedicated leased data telephone lines.

The Bell 103 modem (300 bps) was the first commercial MODEM for computers, released by AT&T Corporation in 1962, it permitted computers and/or computer terminals of any type to be connected point to point via ordinary dialup voice telephone lines. It made possible remote access of timeshared mainframe computers and enabled the development of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) on minicomputers and USENET based email.

The Internet did not begin until 1969 and used a customized minicomputer called an Internet Message Processor (IMP) instead of a MODEM to connect the computer to a network of dedicated leased data telephone lines.

The connection of microcomputers to ordinary dialup voice telephone lines was not really practical until the introduction of the Hayes Smartmodem (a direct 300 bps replacement for the Bell 103 modem) in 1981, which allowed the computer to touchtone dial numbers without needing a separate dialing interface (or having the user dial manually) as earlier MODEMs required.

Ordinary dialup voice telephone line MODEMs were neverable to connect directly to the Internet, instead they had to call a larger computer (usually owned by a for profit company called an ISP) that was connected. Now such MODEMs are rarely used anymore to connect to ISPs as even the fastest data rates practical on these lines (56K bps) is impractically slow for modern Web Browsers. Most ISPs now lease either a Cable MODEM or a DSL MODEM to allow you to connect your computer to their network.