Because It’s Friday – An Internet Map from 1994

How can you make an internet map? This is not and AI story but a paper story.

The Internet Map 1994

Diana and I are in the process of downsizing from a house to a bungalow so stuff has to go. This Because It’s Friday came about because I opened a box, that had been up on a high shelf from when we moved out of our office in 2007! In it were Windows 95 CDs, some 3.5 inch floppies, zip disks, a 32MB USB stick, a bundle of other less interesting stuff and this map:

The Internet Map (1994) by Timothy Edward Downs and Ziff-Davis UK Limited

The registration of the millionth .com domain was still 3 years in the future of this map (Townsend. 2016)

The Internet on a single Sheet of Paper

Unfortunately you cannot see not the detail in the above image – even if you click on it and zoom – only the largest sites are visible. So let’s zoom in and see what is on this internet that Bill Gates did not think would become a thing. (Townsend. 2016)

Click on the images to enlarge them.

Where the internet started

The first working internet was created in the late 1960s as part of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) used packet switching to enable the computers on a network to communicate. (Andrews. 2013)

You can find this network on the map.

Microsoft (large) and Apple (small) are both on this section.

The BBC

Who remembers that the BBC was instrumental in bringing computers to young people and schools. Who used a BBC Micro? I had one.

Some British Bits

You can find the Human Genome Mapping Project on this map. When the map was published the project still had nine years to run before the complete genome was mapped. Then the genome was larger than the internet. (Human Genome Project. 2022)

You can find HM Treasury and Class War on this section.

What was a Gopher?

Something you see all over the map is the term gopher. A gopher was an early protocol for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents on the internet. It was created by a team at the University of Minnesota in 1991 and offered a menu-driven user interface that was easy to use with text-oriented terminals. The use of Gopher rapidly declined after HTTP became the dominant protocol for accessing online resources.

The Internet Map

It also included some useful information to get you onto the internet.

And of course a key:

The Internet Map – Today

Then I had a thought and googled “internet map” and of course there is an site that maps the internet today:

The Internet map (internet-map.net)

I hope this week’s post has put you in a good mood for the weekend. Have a good one.

References

Andrews, E. (2013). Who invented the internet? HISTORY. Retrieved June 15, 2023, from https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet

Human Genome Project. (2022). Human Genome Project. Genome.gov. Retrieved June 15, 2023, from https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/educational-resources/fact-sheets/human-genome-project

Townsend, T. (2016). What Bill Gates Got Wrong About the Internet in the 1990s. inc.com. Retrieved June 15, 2023, from https://www.inc.com/tess-townsend/what-bill-gates-got-wrong-about-the-internet-in-the-1990s.html

Further Reading

Human Genome Project – well worth a read.

Map images copyright Ziff-Davis UK Limited