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The Internet Age
Today you can do just about anything online—anytime and anywhere. How did we get here?
Learn more about other life-changing inventions in our slideshow
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Chances are, you use the internet every day.
You watch MrBeast videos on YouTube. You post selfies from soccer practice on Instagram. You ask Google questions about your homework.
But when the internet was being invented in the 1960s, few people understood what it was. It took decades for it to become popular. Now it seems impossible to imagine a world without it.
How did that change?
A Big Deal
When the internet was created, it didn’t look at all like it does today. Social media didn’t exist yet. There was no YouTube or Amazon. So what did the internet do? It allowed computers to share information with each other.
This was a big deal for scientists in the 1970s and 1980s. But the average person didn’t understand what the internet was or why it mattered.
At the time, many computers were heavy and clunky. Not many people owned one. If you did, you couldn’t do much. You might type up a letter or play a simple game.
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Tim Berners-Lee
But a man named Tim Berners-Lee helped change that. He was a British computer scientist. As he worked on a new invention in the 1980s, he wondered: What if everyone could use the internet?
Berners-Lee went on to create the World Wide Web (or the web for short). It was the first version of the system of web pages you use today. It launched to the public 30 years ago, in April 1993.
Stockbyte/Getty Images (Computer); Autodesk (Dancing Baby)
What’s this? It’s the first viral video—a 3-D cartoon of a dancing baby from 1996!
Thanks to Berners-Lee, you no longer had to be a computer scientist to use the internet. Anyone could visit a website to find information. Not only that, anyone could create a website.
The web took off quickly. By 1996, you could buy books, read the news, connect with other sports fans—even book a flight! Free web-based email services also appeared. This led to the first viral video: a goofy dancing baby forwarded via email!
By 1998, there were 2 million websites.
Information Overload
via webarchive.org
1990s websites
The invention of the web changed the world. It helped ordinary people spread information by posting it online. It transformed the way we shop. Without it, you wouldn’t have social media. There would be no internet as you know it today.
But some experts worry that we now have too much information. They say this “information overload” can be bad for our mental health. Scrolling endless videos and news articles can make us feel
Berners-Lee is now 68. He is proud of his invention, but he also has concerns.
He wanted the internet to be a free and public space. Lately, he worries that big companies like Google have too much power. They control much of what you see online. Fake news and
Berners-Lee is working to find a solution to these problems. But it’s hard. The internet is changing every day.
There’s no telling what it will look like next week—or another 30 years from now.
The Print Revolution
Hundreds of years before the internet, a simple device changed the way the world learned.
Art by Sean McCabe; Sarin Images/The Granger Collection (Gutenberg)
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Think of your favorite book. How long would it take you to copy it by hand? Would it take hours? Days? Months?
Believe it or not, there was a time when most books were made this way. In the early 1400s, there were no bookstores. Public libraries didn’t really exist either. If you wanted a book, it would have to be made by a scribe. That’s a person whose job it was to write out texts by hand.
Scribes used quills—feathers plucked from large birds. Their tips were sharpened with a knife. To write, scribes dipped the quills in ink. If they made a mistake, they gently scraped away a bit of paper to erase it.
A scribe’s
Sarin Images/The Granger Collection
Johannes Gutenberg
But in 1436, all of that changed. A German man named Johannes Gutenberg had an idea. He was a blacksmith, or someone who worked with metal. He wondered: Could there be a better way to print?
Faster and Easier
In parts of China and Korea, people had already been printing on paper for hundreds of years. They carved texts into a wooden block and covered it with ink. Then they pressed paper on top. This process was
Gutenberg had an idea. He made individual metal letters and arranged them to spell out a block of text. Then he coated that text with ink. Finally, a wooden plate was used to press paper into the text, making a copy.
These metal letters could be rearranged and reused many times. Suddenly, printing was faster and easier! Gutenberg’s invention became known as the printing press. It could create about 250 pages an hour.
A Whole New World
INTERFOTO/Sammlung Rauch/The Granger Collection
Gutenberg’s printing press made it possible to print 250 pages an hour!
Gutenberg didn’t just change printing. He changed the world. Before the printing press, there were only about 30,000 books in all of Europe. About 50 years later, that number was closer to 9 million.
Books had become cheaper and easier to get. Ordinary people could learn to read and write. As
The printing press also helped fuel a period in Europe called the Renaissance. This was an explosion of new ideas, artwork, and scientific discovery. During this time, William Shakespeare wrote some of his most famous plays. Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. Scientists invented the microscope.
As for Gutenberg, he didn’t become famous during his lifetime. He also died fairly poor—without even a tombstone to mark his grave.
But if he were alive today, he’d probably be proud. Thanks to his invention, the world became richer in many ways.
