You apparently don't read your own links, do you? (Or else, you do and just like lying). 'Catholic ignorance', indeed.
This is from your OWN LINK:
"The commonly accepted wisdom is that Al Gore, prone to exaggerating his record, claimed at one point on national television that he "invented the Internet." Not only is this fodder for comedians' monologues, this widely accepted folklore may have materially affected the 2000 Presidential campaign..."
"...There is only one problem with this evaluation. It simply isn't true. Just as Rick never said "Play it again, Sam," in Casablanca, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet." That simple fact apparently isn't important to the journalists and comedians who repeat the claim."
"...The Arizona Republic noted in an editorial that "Gore has a way of morphing, Zelig-like into the lives of whomever he's addressing." The editorial showed Gore some mercy, however, continuing: "In fact, as the chairman of a key science subcommittee in 1986, Gore did foster the creation of five supercomputer centers through the National Science Foundation that became the cornerstone of the Internet."
"The Republic was in the minority with this balanced reportage. Most other media outlets downplayed or omitted Gore's role as a Senator in supporting national networking initiatives, instead concentrating on the apparent gaffe. By this point, there was little hope of correcting the record in journalists' minds. And, as the Republic observed, "Alas, too late. Leno's already worked him into the monologue."
"...Once Leno and Letterman, pundits, and opposition politicians had worked up one-liners based on the false "invented the Internet" phrase, the stage was set for the phrase to become the permanent, common understanding of the public at large. Today's journalists are notorious for moving in packs, and the packs tended to quote the phrase without citation"
"...If telephone lineman Mike and millions of other citizens had heard the accurate quote of "I took the initiative in creating the Internet," and if they understood the statement in the context of Gore's actual legislative record, then they might have a very different impression of the Vice President."
"The press, the politicians, the comedians, and the public all ended up with the same image of Gore as resume fabricator. But if we assess Gore's remarks in light of what he actually said, and examine his legislative record, we find that Gore is guilty of somewhat sloppy terminology, not a bold-faced lie."
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Who Invented What, and When Did They Invent It?
Although Gore never said that he "invented the Internet," he did say he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." Can that claim be substantiated? As we will see, Gore did indeed take an intellectual and legislative interest in promoting high-speed data networks in the United States, and he did this during the 1980s, at a time long before most members of the public - let alone most politicians - were thinking about such issues.
The Internet Society hosts a monograph called called "A Brief History of the Internet." (See isoc.org The authors include some of the designers of the essential components of how the Internet works today: Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, and Stephen Wolff. The paper notes these key milestones in Internet history:
* 1961: Leonard Kleinrock writes the first paper on packet switched networks.
* 1962: J.C.R. Licklider of MIT writes a paper describing a globally connected "Galactic Network" of computers.
* 1966: Larry Roberts proposes the ARPANET to the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
* 1968: ARPA issues Request for Quotations for the Interface Message Processors (IMPs), which became the first routers.
* 1969: First IMP is installed at UCLA.
* Early 1970s: Universities and defense agencies and contractors begin to connect to ARPANET.
* 1973: Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf begin research into what eventually becomes IP - the Internet Protocol and its companion, TCP - the Transmission Control Protocol.
* 1973: Bob Metcalfe develops Ethernet, which had been the subject of his PhD thesis, while working at Xerox.
* Early 1980s: The Personal Computer revolution begins.
* Mid 1980s: Local Area Networks (LANs) begin to flourish in business and university environments. Campus area networks soon follow.
* January 1, 1983: All "old-style" traffic on the ARPANET ceases, as TCP/IP becomes the only protocol used. [Arguably, this is the date of the birth of the Internet as a functioning, practical, production network.]
* 1985: Dennis Jennings chooses TCP/IP as the protocol for the planned National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet).
* 1988: NSF sponsors a series of workshops at Harvard on the commercialization and privatization of the Internet.
* 1988: Kahn et al. write a paper "Towards a National Research Network." According to the Brief History, "This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and ushered in high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future information superhighway." [Emphasis added.]
Note that these authors of (and participants in) Internet history state clearly that as early as 1988, then-Senator Gore became involved in the goal of building a national research network. We'll examine his role in more detail later.
"The Brief History" by Cerf et al. details the key milestones in the development of the Internet infrastructure that were essential for the Internet to evolve into what we know and use today. They cite the conscious decision to transition the Internet from a primarily defense, research, and education network into a national network of networks incorporating private as well as commercial traffic.
More recent developments brought about the global Internet as we know it today. Before this infrastructure could be widely adopted, the world demanded applications programs that large numbers of end users could in fact use. By the early 1990s, most users of desktop computers were moving from line-mode interfaces (e.g. MS-DOS) to graphical user interfaces (MacOS, Windows, X-Window, etc.) At this time new applications programs transformed the Internet into a tool the masses could use:
* 1991: Mark McCahill et al. (University of Minnesota) release the Internet Gopher, the first widely-adopted menu-based system for browsing and retrieving Internet-based documents.
* 1991: Tim Berners-Lee et al. at the European Center for High-Energy Physics (CERN) describe the World Wide Web. The first browser is a line-mode tool.
* March 1993: Mark Andreessen et al. at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois release Mosaic, the first widely-adopted graphical browser for the Web
* September 1993: NCSA releases Macintosh and Windows versions of Mosaic.
Recent Internet history is well understood, with the commercialization of long-haul networks, of Internet access companies, the creation of the portal sites, and the rise of the dot-coms and of e-commerce.
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