9781422280744

Commodore, Apple, and Tandy had made the personal computer commonplace. Motorola sold the first analog cell phone in 1983. The first digital cell phone was to run a variety of useful programs using simple computer languages like BASIC. The Commodore 64 was the best- selling personal computer of the 1980s. It was inexpensive, could be connected to a television set, and could be used

produced in 1991. Digital video discs (DVDs) that could hold an entire movie were introduced in 1995, and soon began to replace videotape as the preferred format for home viewing. In the US military, sophisticated spy satellites with high-resolution cameras took pictures of enemy forces, but canisters of undeveloped film had to be retrieved in a complicated mid-air transfer that resulted in many lost photos. The “Kennan” satellite of 1976 was developed with a revolutionary electro-optical camera that transmi¥ed images in digital format. This technology would evolve by 1988 into the digital camera. THE INTERNET In 1969, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) linked military computers to one another in a network that was able to share information between the Pentagon, Strategic Air Command, and bombproof defense command centers under mountain ranges. The research, protocols, and basic hardware were later made available to

colleges in the US, where they were refined into what would eventually become the Internet —an electronic communications network that connects computers around the world. The Internet was made available to

unrestricted commercial use in 1991, and by 1993, the World Wide Web (web) —a set of linked pages called websites that can be

Most people access the Internet through the World Wide Web, a network of hyperlinked “pages” that contain information. The Internet and the World Wide Web have had a profound effect on the global society over the past three decades.

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