1969 AD -
ARPANET
The United States Department of Defense establishes ARPANET, a packet-switched network connecting four university nodes. A message is broken into discrete packets, routed independently across the network, and reassembled at the destination.
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1971 AD -
EMAIL
Ray Tomlinson sends one of the first networked electronic mail messages across ARPANET, introducing the @ symbol to separate user from machine. He later recalls not remembering the contents.
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1976 AD -
PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish a method allowing two parties to establish a shared secret over an unsecured channel without prior contact. Secure communication no longer requires a pre-shared physical key.
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1977 AD -
RSA ENCRYPTION
Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman publish RSA, among the first practical public-key cryptosystems, allowing messages to be encrypted with a publicly shared key and decrypted only by the intended recipient.
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1991 AD -
PGP AND THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Phil Zimmermann releases Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), bringing strong encryption to personal computers. In the same period, Tim Berners-Lee opens the World Wide Web to broader public use, dramatically expanding networked communication.
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