10.6 The Internet

The start of the network which is now known as The Internet was first developed in the 1950's by the US Defence.

It wanted to be able to link their missile bases around the US to be able to strike back at anybody that fired missiles at them. They wanted to remove any possibility of problems so built in 'redundancy'. They created a 'mesh network'.

Other countries around the World developed similar national networks and when IBM linked the US to the UK via a trans-Atlantic cable called FatPipe in the early 1980's, the International Network was born - the Internet.