Step by step

Here I said that the first step to the "World Wide Web of the Internet" was made in 1965. By combining two computers, US scientists realized that "pieces of iron" can exchange information without the participation of a person.

But before the creation of a unified network in the form, as we now used to use, it took more than 20 years.

It is clear that, like any novelty in the technological process, the idea of ​​combining computers was immediately in demand by the military-industrial complex, a set of defense enterprises.

And in this sense, at the height of the Cold War, the USSR was ahead of the US in time.

The decision to create a missile defense (missile defense) system in the USSR was in 1953 after the letter of the "seven marshals", in 1956 two ABM projects - System A and Barrier - were presented and work on the UBP (general combat program) was started.

That's when computers came in handy, which were renamed to digital computers (digital computers).

Founder of the BIO Volkov EA has developed a program that allows to calculate the trajectory of the flight of a warhead of a ballistic missile based on radar (radar) data.

a photo

Now the computer, which used to be used only to speed up the calculations, could provide target detection, interception and autosupport, calculation of the launching time of the interceptor, the precise guidance mode and the moment of detonation.
And immediately revealed two problems of the computer - the lack of input data and low computational speed in comparison with the task.
At a low speed, computations fought the distribution of computations among several computers, and the lack of data was compensated by the creation of networks combining radars and digital computers.

By the way, digital computers, the development of which began in the late 60s of the last century, with modern filling are still used.
With the index "B" - onboard, they are installed on aircraft and other mobile objects, mostly military.

The difference between the computer and various specialized calculators and data processing units is that the computer has a generally accepted computer structure: the presence of operational and long-term memory, input-output devices, and so on.

a photo

But all these military achievements had nothing to do with the consumer Internet. And even then the Union did not even set such a task.

At the end of 1966, DARPA (an agency for advanced defense research) invited another scientist L. Roberts to develop data on the design of computer systems. Which, of course, were primarily intended for reliable communication in the conditions of war.
And in 1967, a project for the management of military and civilian objects during military operations was presented, in which L. Kleinrock's idea of ​​switching data packets on the title (address) was used.
This made it possible to use one communication channel to transmit information to many users.
The project was called ARPANET.
At the same time, at an international symposium on Rules for the Interaction of Computer Calculations, a group of scientists from the United Kingdom, using data from the USSR and the USA, proposed a variant of the Packet Data Network.
And after that it became clear that the work on packet communication and not only for military purposes, was conducted in parallel in several countries.
There was a need to somehow reduce all this to a common denominator. Since a large number of works were carried out at the expense of the DARPA budget, it issued a request for quotations and organized a contest for the main component of the Network - the packet switch, which later became known as the "interface processor".

When they managed to optimize the topology and solve the economic aspects of the network (Business is business, nothing personal.) And prepare a system for measuring the characteristics of the network, they began to develop a network structure and network applications. In general, these works are held to this day.

After all the developments, in 1969, the world's first network united the computers of four US research centers.

Just as the Russian word "satellite" has become international and is spelled "sputnik", so is the English word "calculator" = "computer" - the computer has become known throughout the world.

And, probably, this event (networking in a network of four computers) can be considered the second step of humanity in the "international web".
.................................................. ...