http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html
Keith Lynch's timeline of net related terms and concepts
This is http://keithlynch.net/timeline.html
Here is Keith Lynch's timeline of net related terms, concepts,
stories, and people, showing when they were first mentioned in my
archives. I've been saving email and netnews for a long time. I
now have close to three gigabytes of it, stretching back to the first
email I ever sent or received, 28 years ago. (Three gigs may not seem
like much by today's standards, but it's a lot for plain ASCII text.)
Also see my spam timeline.
Terms already in common use in the mid-70s include ARPANET, BB&N, DEC,
EMACS, FTP, IBM, IMP, PDP-10, PDP-11, RFC, TELNET, and TIP.
Year Term
Month
75 6 MSGGROUP mailing list
79 9 SF-LOVERS mailing list
80 1 "digest" (a mailing list where messages are bundled together)
80 1 moderated mailing lists
80 6 MUD (Multi-User Dungeon)
80 7 Saul Jaffe (later moderator of SF-LOVERS, 12/83-1/01)
80 9 Addresses with ! in them (later became common, now quite rare)
81 3 Microsoft
81 4 "UUCP" (mentioned on the ARPAnet)
81 5 Purity test
81 7 Brad Templeton (later founded Clarinet and rec.humor.funny)
81 8 "Usenet" (mentioned on the ARPAnet)
81 8 "@ party" (a party for Internet people)
81 12 CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility)
82 2 "Internet" (then called ARPAnet)
82 2 "newsgroups" (mentioned on the ARPAnet)
82 11 Smileys such as :-)
82 11 TCP
82 11 Alternating long and short lines in email, due to bad double wrapping
82 12 Addresses with dots in them (now mandatory)
82 12 Addresses ending in .arpa (ended 2/90)
82 12 Addresses with % in them (later became common, now quite rare)
83 9 GNU (GNU's Not Unix)
83 11 > used to quote material being replied to
84 1 Apple Macintosh
84 3 rot13
84 3 >> used to quote doubly-nested material being replied to
84 3 | used to quote material being replied to
84 8 Bandykin mailing list
85 1 Addresses ending in .com
85 4 Addresses ending in .edu
85 5 CD-ROM
85 7 FidoNet
85 7 Addresses ending in .gov
85 8 RISKS Digest (a moderated mailing list, now aliased to comp.risks)
85 8 Chain letters via email (quickly stamped out until 1993)
85 12 Addresses ending in .uk
86 1 FSF (Free Software Foundation)
86 1 Larry Lippman (knowledgable and entertaining poster, died 12/91)
86 1 "postmaster" addresses
86 2 WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) (an ISP)
86 3 "netiquette"
86 3 Windows (the Microsoft product)
86 6 80386 (a CPU)
86 6 ISDN
86 11 Addresses ending in .net
87 1 MX records
87 1 Addresses ending in .org
87 6 UUNET (an ISP)
88 1 Year 2000 problem (i.e. lots of software will break then)
88 1 80486 (a CPU)
88 2 Perl
88 3 impending death of the net predicted
88 3 Cliff Stoll (later author of Cuckoo's Egg and of Silicon Snake Oil)
88 4 "Get a life!"
88 5 Addresses ending in .ca
88 8 rec.humor.funny newsgroup
88 8 "@! party" (a party for Internet and Usenet people)
88 11 The Robert Tappan Morris worm, which quickly infected much of the net.
89 3 GIF (a graphics format)
89 5 IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
89 5 LPF (League for Programming Freedom) (opposes "look & feel" copyrights)
89 5 Kibo (searched for all instances of "Kibo" on the net)
89 7 COMPUSERVE.COM on mail
89 8 PANIX (an ISP)
89 9 FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
89 9 Netcom (an ISP)
89 10 ClariNet
89 11 world.std.com (an ISP, supposedly the first directly on the Internet)
90 2 Last addresses ending in .arpa
90 5 Dilbert (a comic strip)
90 5 Last ITS system shut down at MIT
90 7 freenets
90 7 "newbie"
90 8 EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
90 12 The (false) story about a Chevy Impala with a JATO unit in Arizona
90 12 The (true) story about dynamiting a dead whale
90 12 "GUI" (Graphical User Interface)
91 2 Craig Shergold wants cards
91 2 Craig Shergold doesn't want cards
91 3 cyber (as a prefix referring to the net)
91 3 cyberspace (referring to the net, not to something in SF)
91 3 JPEG (a graphics format)
91 5 Panix (an ISP)
91 6 Archie (a data retrieval tool)
91 6 PGP (Zimmerman's RSA-based encryption software)
91 6 WAIS (a data retrieval tool)
91 9 Digex (an ISP)
91 10 Robert McElwaine (flamboyant and controversial poster)
91 10 TIN (a newsreader)
91 12 compuserve.com gets access to newsgroups
91 12 Geoff Miller (whose posts are designed to annoy people)
91 12 QuickTime (a movie format)
91 12 Windows NT
92 1 Gopher (a data retrieval tool)
92 1 The (true) scrotum self-repair story
92 1 POP (Point of Presence)
92 3 "Web" (as in World-Wide)
92 3 Flashdrive
92 5 aol.com on mail
92 5 Demon (the UK ISP)
92 5 SLIP (the connection protocol)
92 6 "browser" (software)
92 6 "WWW"
92 6 http:// (URLs -- now seen in every magazine, TV show, and movie)
92 7 "firewall" (as a part of the net)
92 7 14.4 kbps modems
92 7 MIME
92 9 "administrivium" joke
92 10 "home page"
92 10 "mouse balls" hoax IBM memo
92 10 Pentium (a CPU)
92 11 anon.penet.fi (an anon server) (closed 8/96)
92 11 "cypherpunk"
92 11 Linux (an operating system)
92 11 Project Gutenberg
92 11 PPP (a connection protocol)
92 11 Veronica (a data retrieval tool)
92 11 Winsock
92 12 Eudora (a mailer)
93 1 Joel Furr (makes net-related T-shirts)
93 2 "anon server", also "anonymous server"
93 2 Godwin's Law (Hitler & Nazis will be mentioned, ending the thread)
93 2 Wired magazine
93 3 "surf" (not referring to the water sport)
93 3 aol.com gets access to newsgroups
93 3 MPEG (a format for short movies on the net)
93 3 Genie on mail
93 4 procmail
93 4 Delphi on mail
93 4 "National Information Infrastructure" meaning the existing net (future tense, 7/92)
93 5 BIX on mail
93 6 HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
93 6 "Internet Talk Radio"
93 6 Mosaic (a web browser)
93 6 The $5 -> $50,000 chain letter in newsgroups
93 6 Cisco (a brand of router)
93 6 Clarknet (an ISP)
93 7 Geek code
93 7 Delphi gets access to newsgroups
93 7 "netizen"
93 8 "information superhighway" meaning the existing net (future tense, 3/93)
93 8 Genie gets access to newsgroups
93 9 The $5 -> $50,000 chain letter in newsgroups mentioning Dave Rhodes
93 9 "information highway" meaning the existing net (future tense, 10/92)
93 9 "URL"
93 11 Lynx (a web browser)
93 11 SMS (Short Message Service)
93 12 "cybersex", referring to the net (3/92 referring to SF) (1971 in a zine)
93 12 DOOM (a computer game)
94 1 "intranet"
94 1 "roadkill along the information superhighway"
94 1 Prodigy on mail
94 2 "information supercollider"
94 2 EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center)
94 3 unsolicited commercial email (now called email spam)
94 4 The "green card lawyers" (whom I shan't name, lest they sue me) spam
94 4 "spam" (meaning mass sending of netnews)
94 4 28.8 kbps modems
94 5 "search engine"
94 5 "web page"
94 6 Mindspring (an ISP)
94 7 CUSeeMe (a video conferencing protocol)
94 7 "ISP" (Internet Service Provider) (previously "Public Access Unix")
94 9 cgi-bin
94 9 Windows 95 (released 8/95)
94 9 "The September that never ended" (referring to 9/93)
94 9 Earthlink (an ISP)
94 10 anon.twwells.com (an anon server)
94 10 Prodigy gets access to newsgroups
94 11 CancelMoose
94 11 Netscape
94 11 Yahoo!
94 12 The "good times" email virus hoax
94 12 "spam" (meaning mass sending of mail to legitimate mailing lists)
95 1 "The Internet is full. Go away." -- Joel Furr
95 1 Mozilla
95 2 CDA (Communications Decency act), also called S.314
95 2 NetPhone (to make voice calls over the net)
95 2 Cable modems
95 3 "velveeta" (crossposting an article to too many newsgroups)
95 4 "chat room", referring to the net (7/93 referring to AOL)
95 4 "shell account"
95 5 MP3 (an audio format, MPEG Layer (or Level) III, ISO/IEC-11172-3)
95 5 Lycos
95 6 RealAudio (an audio format)
95 6 Java (not the island nor the drink)
95 7 "spam" (meaning mass sending of mail to all addresses one can scrounge)
95 7 NoCeM
95 7 Windows 98
95 8 "applet"
95 8 IPv6 (eight octet IP addresses) discussed
95 10 aol.com on the web (anticipated in rec.humor.oracle 5 mos. earlier)
95 10 DejaNews
95 10 Erols (the ISP)
95 11 Frames
95 11 CyberPromo (notorious spam outfit)
95 12 "Y2K problem"
95 12 AltaVista
95 12 JavaScript
96 1 "rogue domain"
96 1 33.6 kbps modems
96 1 compuserve.com on the web
96 1 Microsoft Internet Explorer
96 1 Pentium Pro (a CPU)
96 1 EBay (an auction site)
96 2 ADSL (high speed communications over phone lines)
96 2 Wiki
96 3 Spamblocks (e.g. REMOVE.TO.REPLY) added to addesses to foil spammers
96 3 MMX chip
96 3 DVD disks
96 4 X-No-Archive: header lines
96 7 ActiveX
96 10 56 kbps modems
96 10 "infomercial stuporhighway"
96 10 WebTV
96 11 PointCast
96 11 "Four Reports" chain letter mentioning Christopher Erickson
96 12 ICQ
96 12 The first version of this timeline
97 3 VERIO.NET (an ISP that buys up other ISPs)
97 4 IEMMC (email spammers' organization, claimed to have "universal" remove list)
97 4 SETI@home
97 5 CAUCE (an organization that favors a law banning commercial email spam)
97 7 WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
97 9 "Four Reports" chain letter mentioning Karen Liddell
97 10 IEMMC dead. CyberPromo, Quantcom, Nancynet, and other spammers offline
97 10 RBL (Realtime Blackhole List) of spam sites
97 11 Slashdot.org
98 2 ACP (Americans for Computer Privacy)
98 4 DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
98 5 "Script Kiddie"
98 5 Bluetooth (a wireless protocol)
98 6 "Microsoft Tax" (Computer buyers paying for MS whether they want it or not)
98 7 X-Accept-Language: header lines
98 11 RemarQ
98 12 Google (a search engine)
99 3 Melissa Virus
99 3 Microsoft Passport
99 3 RSS (RDF Site Summary)
99 5 Napster (system for accessing MP3 audio files).
99 6 Ian Clarke's "Freenet"
99 6 802.11b (a wireless protocol)
99 8 PayPal
99 10 TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Alliance)
99 11 DMA announces a new global remove list (e-mps.org). Idiots.
99 11 "blog" (short for weblog)
00 1 X-No-Markup: header lines
00 3 Gnutella
00 4 LiveJournal
00 4 Verizon
00 5 LoveBug Virus
00 6 Blackberry
01 2 Windows XP
01 2 Google buys Deja archives
01 3 Wikipedia
01 4 Google restores Deja newsgroup archives
01 7 SirCam worm
01 7 Code Red worm
01 9 Nimda worm
01 12 Google extends newsgroup archives back from 1995 to 1981
02 1 Googlewhack
02 3 RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
02 11 Podcast
02 12 "Captchas" (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart).
03 1 SQL Slammer (aka Sapphire) worm
04 2 Firefox Browser
05 6 YouTube
Please note that just because something was mentioned at a particular
time doesn't mean it was available at that time. For instance
"Windows 95" was being discussed almost a year before it was released.
Conversely, just because I saw no mention of something before a
particular time doesn't mean it didn't exist until then. It doesn't
even mean nobody was discussing it on the net until then. I read a
lot, and save much of it, but I don't read or save everything on the
net, and I never have, not even during the years this actually would
have been possible.
This is *not* a simple string search. I was looking for terms in
context. For instance 28.8 modems were mentioned speculatively as
soon as 14.4 modems were about to become available. I only listed
when 28.8 modems were being discussed as something actually existing
or about to become available. I also ignored the "cyber-" prefix
where it refers to Gibson's books, CDC mainframs, or Norbert Weiner's
scholarly work, the word MUD where it refers to wet dirt, and
Java referring to coffee or a tropical island.
Finally, remember that the Internet and the Usenet used to be very
separate things. I was only on the Internet until they largely merged.
Please feel free to suggest additional new (or old) terms for me to
add to this list.
Return to Keith Lynch's home page.
Last updated August 27, 2006.