Answer The Internet was originally developed by DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - as a means to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities.

Originally it was just email and FTP sites as well as the Usenet, where scientists could question and answer each other. It was originally called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork). The concept was developed starting in 1964, and the first messages passed were between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in 1969. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT had published the first paper on packet switching theory in 1961. Since networking computers was new to begin with, standards were being developed on the fly. Once the concept was proven, the organizations involved started to lay out some ground rules for standardization.

One of the most important was the communications protocol, TCP/IP, developed by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn in 1974. Robert Metcalfe is credited with Ethernet, which is the basic communication standard in networked computers.

Tim Berners-Lee, who perhaps specified technological applicability and/or linguistic construction of HTML while working at CERN, is chiefly credited for the ease of use and wide public adoption of the web. His website is: w3.org.

Al Gore really did have a substantial part in the US legal framework and governmental issues related to the Internet; he never said he invented it.

There wasn't just ONE person who invented the Internet. The Internet is just a way to view files and information that someone puts onto a server. The Internet is just a way to access the information.

Leonard Kleinrock was the first person to write a paper on the idea of packet switching (which is essential for the Internet to work. He wrote this idea in 1961.

Others who were essential to what we now call the Internet. (Without these guys, the Internet wouldn't exist):

Larry G. Roberts created the first functioning long-distance computer networks in 1965 and designed the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the seed from which the modern Internet grew, in 1966.

Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data on the modern Internet, in 1972 and 1973. If any two people "invented the Internet," it was Kahn and Cerf - but they have publicily stated that "no one person or group of people" invented the Internet.

Radia Perlman invented the spanning tree algorithm in the 1980s. Her spanning tree algorithm allows efficient bridging between separate networks. Without a good bridging solution, large-scale networks like the Internet would be impractical. Answer

Like most things, the internet has many fathers. But the Americans Bob Metcalf and Dave Boggs at Xerox PARC in 1974 should get most of the credit. There is a hilarious memo on the www from Metcalf's Xerox boss dismissing the idea as foolish. But Tim Berners-Lee in about 1992 invented the world wide web. This was adapted from other search engines like Gopher, but was chiefly responsible for the ease of use and wide adoption of the WWW+Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web, commonly expressed as 'the internet'.
A single person did not create the Internet that we know and use today. Below is a listing of several different people who've helped contribute and develop the Internet.

The idea

The initial idea is credited as being Leonard Kleinrock'safter he published his first paper entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets" on May 31, 1961.

In 1962 J.C.R. Licklider becomes the first Director of IPTO and gave his vision of a galactic network. In addition to the ideas from Licklider and Kleinrock, Robert Taylor helped create the idea of the network, which later became ARPANET.

Initial creation

The Internet as we know it today first started being developed in the late 1960's.

In the summer of 1968, the Network Working Group (NWG) held its first meeting chaired by Elmer Shapirowith the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) with attendees: Steve Carr, Steve Crocker, Jeff Rulifson, andRon Stoughton. In the meeting the group discussed solving issues related to getting hosts to communicate with each other.

In December 1968, Elmer Shapiro with SRI released a report "A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters." Based on this work and earlier work done by Paul Baran, Thomas Marilland others;Lawrence Roberts and Barry Wessler helped to create the final version of the Interface Message Processor (IMP) specifications. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN)was later awarded the contract to design and build the IMP sub network.

Introduction of the Internet to the general public

UCLA puts out a press release introducing the public to the Internet on July 3, 1969.

First network equipment

August 29, 1969 the first network switch and the first piece of network equipment called "IMP", which is short for (Interface Message Processor) is sent to UCLA. On September 2, 1969 the first data moves from UCLA host to the switch.

The first distributed message and network crash

On Friday October 29, 1969 at 10:30 p.m., the first Internet message was sent from computer science Professor Leonard KleinRock's laboratory at UCLA, after the second piece of network equipment was installed at SLI. This connection not only enabled the first transmission to be made, but is also considered to be the first Internet backbone.

The first message to be distributed was "LO", which was an attempt at "LOGIN" by Charley S. Kline to log into the SLI computer from UCLA. However, the message was unable to be completed because the SLI system crashed. Shortly after the crash, the issue was resolved and he was able to log into the computer.

E-mail is developed

Ray Tomlinson introduces network e-mail in 1972. The first messaging system to send messages across a network to other users.

TCP is developed

Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn design TCP during 1973 and later publish it with the help of Yogen Dalaland Carl Sunshine in December of 1974 in RFC 675.

First commercial network

A commercial version of ARPANET known as Telenet is introduced in 1974 and considered by many to be the first Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Ethernet is conceived

Bob Metcalfe develops Ethernet idea in 1973.

TCP/IP is created

In 1978 TCP splits into TCP/IP driven by Danny Cohen, David Reed, and John Shoch to support real-time traffic. This allows the creation of UDP. TCP/IP is later standardized into ARPANET in 1983 and is still the primary protocol used for the Internet.

DNS is introduced

Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel introduce DNS in 1984.

HTML

In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee develops HTML, which made a huge contribution to how we navigate and view the Internet today.

WWW

Tim Berners-Lee introduces WWW to the public on August 6, 1991.

The development of what we now call the Internet started in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite, beating the United States into space. The powers behind the American military at the time became highly alarmed as this meant that the USSR could theoretically launch bombs into space, and then drop them anywhere on earth. In 1958 the concerns of people in the US military triggered the creation of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

DARPA's initial role was to jump start American research in technology, find safeguards against a space-based missile attack and to reclaim the technological lead from the USSR. After only 18 months after the creation of DARPA, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency had developed and deployed the first US satellite. DARPA went on to have a direct contribution to the development of the Internet by appointing Joseph Licklider to head the new Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO).

It was the job of the IPTO to further the work previously done by members of the "SAGE" (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) program and develop technologies to protect the US against a space-based nuclear attack.

Licklider envisaged the potential benefits of a countrywide communications network, influencing his successors to implement his vision and to hire Lawrence Roberts who at that time was carrying out research with networks which was also being funded by DARPA.

Roberts led development of the ARPANet network architecture, and based it on the new idea of packet switching. A special computer called an Interface Message Processor was developed to realise the design. The ARPANet first went live in October 1969, with communications between the University of California in Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute.

The first networking protocol used on the ARPANet was the Network Control Program. In 1983, it was replaced with the TCP/IP protocol, which is still the standard used today.

In 1990, the National Science Foundation took over management of what was then called the NSFNet, and significantly expanded its reach by connecting it to the CSNET in Universities throughout North America, and later to the EUnet throughout research facilities in Europe.

Thanks in large part to the NSF's free-thinking management, and the growing popularity of the web, the nature of the Internet changed quickly in 1992, when the U.S. government began pulling out of network management and commercial entities offered Internet access to the general public for the first time. This change marked the beginning of the Internet's astonishing expansion. According to a survey conducted by CommerceNet and Nielsen Media Research in 1997, the number of users worldwide was believed to be well into the tens of millions. The so called Internet explosion coincided with the advent of increasingly powerful yet reasonably priced personal computers with easy-to-use GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces). The result was an attraction of recent computer converts to the Internet, and new multimedia capabilities, the size, scope and design of which allows users to:

• connect easily through ordinary personal computers

• exchange electronic mail with friends and colleagues

• post and update frequently, information for others to access

• access multimedia information that includes sound, photographic images and video

• access diverse attitudes and perspectives from around the world

• to directly and transparently communicate between computers

Today, the Internet is not owned or funded by any one institution, organisation, or government, it is a self-sustaining widespread information infrastructure accessible to hundreds of millions of people world-wide. The Internet is, however, directed by the Internet Society (ISOC), which is composed of volunteers. ISOC appoints the IAB (Internet Architecture Board) sub-council, the appointed members of which decide on standards, network resources, and network addresses. The day-to-day issues of Internet operation is taken care by of curtsy of a volunteer group called the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).

In brief a small number of governing boards work to establish common standards, few rules or single organisation bind the Internet, essentially the Internet is in the most part an ungoverned global network of networks.

• The Internet was invented by the US Department of Defence as a means of communication if we were attacked by Russia. That was in 1969. The WWW on the other hand was invented by an Englishman called Tim Berners-Lee in Switzerland in 1989. The Internet dates back to the 1950s and 60s, although few of us knew of it then as it was part of the American defence system.

• Some say development started in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first satellite.

• I think it's the difference between pop culture and invention that confuses people. The origins of the Internet stretch back to the 1950s and the invention of the World Wide Web to 1989, but the Internet IS a newish innovation as far as pop culture is concerned as it only really kicked into the lives of the vast majority of us after the 1989 invention of WWW.

• DARPA was created in 1958. But this only started the research that led to create the Internet. The Network Control Protocol (NCP) was finalized and deployed in December 1970 by the Network Working Group (NWG), led by Steve Crocker. But it was not until RFC 768 "User Datagram Protocol", RFC 791 "Internet Protocol", RFC 792 "Internet Control Message Protocol, RFC 793 "Transmission Control Protocol" were ratified in 1980 and 1981 that the Internet took shape. Modern protocols like e-mail, ftp, telnet, http ... all depend on these underlying protocols. The ARPANET host protocol was switched from NCP to TCP/IP as of January 1, 1983. The underlying protocols that run the Internet have fundamentally changed since this date. Much later on Mar. 11, 1999 Al Gore claims to have invented the Internet: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." References: http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

• The seed of what would become the internet was created by ARPANET in 1969. It was basically a group of researchers working for the Department of Defense.

TECHNILOGIES which gives conribution to the succss of WWW are:

(Standard Generalized Markup Language) An ISO standard for defining the format in a text document. Widely used in the publishing industry, an SGML document uses a separate Document Type Definition (DTD) file that defines the format codes, or tags, embedded within it. Since SGML describes its own formatting, it is known as a "meta-language." SGML is a very comprehensive language that also includes hypertext links. HTML is an SGML document that uses a fixed set of tags, while XML is a simplified version of SGML.

(EXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data from the W3C. It is used for defining data elements on a Web page and business-to-business documents. XML uses a similar tag structure as HTML; however, whereas HTML defines how elements are displayed, XML defines what those elements contain. While HTML uses predefined tags, XML allows tags to be defined by the developer of the page. Thus, virtually any data items, such as "product," "sales rep" and "amount due," can be identified, allowing Web pages to function like database records. By providing a common method for identifying data, XML supports business-to-business transactions and has become "the" format for electronic data interchange and Web services

(HyperText Markup Language) The document format used on the Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags (codes) embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Web. Each link contains the URL, or address, of a Web page residing on the same server or any server worldwide, hence "World Wide" Web.HTML 2.0 was defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) with a basic set of features, including interactive forms capability. Subsequent versions added more features such as blinking text, custom backgrounds and tables of contents. However, each new version requires agreement on the tags used, and browsers must be modified to implement those tags

RSS (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of webfeeds formats used to publish frequently updated works-such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video-in a standardized format An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed" or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

The technologies that contribite to success of the World Wide Web includes: SGML, XML, HTML, and RSS.

While it is unclear exactly when the idea of inter-machine communication was first conceived, the first experiments in early computer networks took place in the 1940s.

The inception of the Internet (ARPANET) was 1969.

The World Wide Web (WWW) as we know it, which is effectively the graphical front-end that (depending on your viewpoint) sits atop or is contained within the Internet, was created circa 1994.

Go to W3C and look for 'A Little History of the World Wide Web' for more detailed information.
The World Wide Web (WWW) was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Robert Cailliau later joined in 1990.

The name "World Wide Web" was given in May 1990. The first communication over the Internet between an HTTP client and HTTP server (now more popularly known as a web server) was successfully tested on December 25th, 1990. The first Web site was publicly announced on August 6th, 1991. The first web server in the US went online at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in December 1991. There were 26 web servers in the world by November 1992. By October 1993 there were over 200 web servers. Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (also called 'W3C') in October, 1994. The W3C organization maintains the official standards for communication between web servers and web browsers.

More comments:

It was not actually invented. It more of just came about. Mainly hackers started it when accessing other computers.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web in 1989, while at CERN, in Switzerland. The WWW is NOT the same thing as the Internet; it RIDES on the Internet (the Internet was started after the 2nd World War, the first project was called ARPANET)

Another answer would note that the Internet was not actually invented until several years later than the above scenario, when multiple networks were connected together (an "internet" is, by definition more than one network), and the internet protocol was standardized in 1982.