35 Common Inventions That Are Much Older Than People Think

The Internet’s “official” birthday is January 1, 1983. However, the Internet is much older than that. Functional parts of the Internet as we know it today date back to the 1960s, and the concept of the Internet dates back even further to the 1940s. Long story short, the Internet was decades in the making before it hit our home desktop computers.

The early functional parts of the Internet were networks like the National Physical Laboratory, also known as the NPL, in the UK and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, commonly known as DARPA. Both of these networks were developed in the 1960s and used by governments and private companies. Eventually, some of those networks merged, and the Internet was born.