How did the Internet develop?

Back in the 1960s, the Internet was developed when the United States government wanted military scientists around their vast country to be able to share information and developments. An essential requirement was that the system should be able to withstand even nuclear attack. The solution proved to be a system of computers linked by a network that could allow small packets of data to be transferred  by any available route along the 'web' of connections and then pasted together to reform the original on the receiving computer. The development of Web browsers allowed graphics and text to be visualised as Web pages.

The history of the Internet is described in greater detail on :

http://www.isoc.org/Internet/history/brief.shtml#Origins

and

 www.w3.org/History.html

see google web history

www.elsop.com/wrc/h_web.htm

http://www.zakon.org/robert/Internet/timeline/#1950s

http://www.isoc.org/Internet/history/brief.shtml

According to http://www.domainstats.com/ the number of domain names today (22nd September 2002) is:

INTERNATIONAL (COM) 21,230,351

INTERNATIONAL (EDU) 7,409

INTERNATIONAL (NET)  3,587,312

INTERNATIONAL (ORG) 2,332,400

United Kingdom (CO.UK)3,488,941

Total Domain Names        30,876,495