In the 150 years since the development of the telegraph, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has evolved rapidly. The telephone and Electronic Data Processing (EDP) have been invented. The first electronic automatic computer was invented in 1946, and the microprocessor in 1971. The launch of the first personal computers (PCs) is dated variously from 1950 (Simon), to Apple II (1977) or the IBM PC (1981). Nordhaus (2007) estimated that the growth in computer power has averaged 55% per year since the end of World War II. Figure 2.5 shows the costs related to different computing technologies. The precursor of the Internet came in the late 1960s. A branch of the US Department of Defense developed a network to link university and defence contractors. In the middle of the 1980s, the backbone topology of the Internet was introduced by the NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) in the US. Regional networks shared access to regional ‘supercomputers’ which had been connected together via the ‘backbone’. The backbone topology directly reflects the cost structure: ‘lots of cheap routers are used to manage a limited number of expensive lines’ (MackieMason and Varian (1993)). Although the backbone topology has been replaced today by several Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) where Internet Service Providers (ISPs) exchange traffic directly, the word ‘backbone’ is still used for high-speed connections between providers. The TCP/IP Protocol (Transmission Control Protocol over Internet Protocol) was also introduced by NSFNET in 1986 which is still the foundation of today’s Internet traffic. The ‘World Wide Web’, which was introduced in 1989, is a system of linked sites with graphical elements, which can be read with a browser software and is often called ‘the Internet’ today. In 2004, the Morse Code was extended with ^--^--^ by ITU, which represents the symbol @ used in email addresses. So the old Morse and the young Internet technique converge.
Roots and Early History of Digitalization
