I was trying to explain to my 9-year old daughter what the Internet actually is when I remembered this brilliant short animation:
Apart from being a very good introduction to what the Internet is and where it came from, its a useful reminder that from its birth the Internet was a truly international venture with British, French and American brains behind the basic systems we take for granted now.
It also a reminder of what a hot-bed of innovation the UK can be. With Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace pioneering the whole movement almost 190 years ago, we perhaps had a hiatus until the war-time work at Bletchley which led to the birth of modern computing and Manchester’s stored program architecture for “baby”, Britain continued with packet switched networks and fibre-optics – and of course the web.
In recent months we’ve seen Andrew Marr document modern British history and Brian Cox tackle astronomical science for the BBC – perhaps its time for someone to take on Britain’s role in the history of computing from Babbage to broadband.
(PS: I’m sure you wouldn’t but don’t make the same mistake as the people making negative comments about this video on YouTube. Its about the birth of the Internet and not Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s work at CERN which led to the web)