Why do most Americans think America invented the internet?

Question

Some answers I have viewed from Americans state that the Americans invented the internet. How arrogant. It was, of course, invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist.

Answer 1

Plain arrogance - they even voted Alexander Graham Bell one of the Greatest Ever americans despite him having been Scottish.They just love to claim they invented everything.
It reminds me of the character in the BBC comedy program "Goodness Gracious Me" who claimed everything was "Indian!" LOL.

Answer 2

You have a point, Hollywood always changes events in history to make the Americans the heroes…

BUT actually…

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in the 90s... but the Internet is not exactly the same thing:

'The Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous: the Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc.; the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.

The World Wide Web is accessible via the Internet, as are many other services including e-mail, file sharing...' Wikipedia

Answer 3

The internet wasn't created by anybody, it just "became" - though the foundation was lain by developments during the 1950's, when the USA's ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency) were asked to expand upon the US military's networked radar systems.

ARPA then went on to become the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the TCP/IP protocol suite (a method of communicating packets of data across a network) came into being. TCP/IP itself isn't a medium - it is only a set of agreements that systems will abide by - but it paved the way for reliable "dialog" between interconnected devices. This, in turn, lead to the first TCP/IP-base wide area network in the early 80's.

In reality, Britain also had an involvement in this early internet, but Berners-Lee certainly didn't invent it - he was off playing with particle accelerators in Switzerland. Yet he did come up with the idea of hypertext: documents that can cite other documents by way of a hyperlink - the so-called "foundation of the world wide web".

What's interesting is that, sometime in the early part of this millennium, a survey of computer-owning Americans were asked a trick question: "Who invented the internet?" Their answers were either "I don't know", or "Bill Gates". Oddly enough, a similar question was asked of British computer owners: "Who invented the computer?" The answers were either "I don't know", or "Bill Gates".

To say that he had nothing at all in the slightest to do with either of those inventions, Bill Gates was given an awful lot of credit. ;-)

Answer 4

I honestly never really thought about who invented it, primarily because the internet is not one location or place. Many networks existed prior to what we currently call the internet, but advances in technology (computer processing speed, server connectivity, modem capacities, and fiber optics) allowed many existing networks to come together to form the internet.

I know that much of the American contribution came from the US government and especially the ADA defense department network. I am sure other contributors such as Berners-Lee were equally and even more important, but trying to identify who invented it would be comparable to decding who invented the car (Benz? Stanley? Ford? et al) or better still, fire.

That said, I do agree that many of my countrymen do think it is a US invention and that comes from a certain national sense of self-worth, combined with a LARGE portion of ignorance. I sometimes feel somewhat abashed by the typical American attitude that is truly more shallow ignorance, than any sense of willful arrogance. Not all of us are so narrow-minded.

Of course, other nations are occassionally guilty of this as well, but I think that US culture (and tourists) travel around the world so much, that it is more commonly seen on our behalf.

Answer 5

All you have to do is simple research. The internet was created by America, HTML and World Wide Web by Britain, it would not have been possible however without America creating the Internet first. End of story.

Answer 6

Doofus.

Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web and not the internet. They are not the same thing.

The internet evolved from Arpa-net which was developed by ARPA(Advanced Research Projects Agency ) of the United States Department of Defense and was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the progenitor of the global Internet.

Answer 7

The internet was actually created by Lawrence Roberts of MIT connected a Massachusetts computer with a California computer in 1965 over dial-up telephone lines. But this concept was first concieved by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, who proposed a global network of computers in 1962. Email was created in the early 70's and the first user friendly application was not developed until the late 80's. Tim Berners-Lee however is partially responsible for the creation of the world wide web which is the internet as most people know it. (Webpages and email) also known as the World Wide Web

Answer 8

I am not sure how you concluded on this. Everybody gets jealous of high achievers. One time it was British who were leading, but nowadays there are many countries which are aiming towards technological innovation. Probably a day will come soon with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence that robots will joke about humans. Hope it is not soon.

Answer 9

North or South Americans?

Answer 10

The Internet was a development / invention of the US Dept. of Defense.....How arrogant of them....

Answer 11

Yep, DARPA NET as used in The Pentagon was the model for the networking heirarchy system that became the internet.
So yes, The Americans pretty much did invent the internet.