1960-s: ARPANET
ARPANET was the first network created by humans that used packets during transmission like in the modern Internet. It was created by the US agency Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1969 for connecting with remote computers for military, academic and research purposes and stopped operating in 1990. The notable thing about ARPANET is that IP was used as the routable protocol and it is still used nowadays. In addition, a lot of protocols were developed and tested with the help of ARPANET. On 29 October 1969, the first successful host-to-host connection happened on this network between Stanford Research Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles.
1970-s: VisiCalc
The first spreadsheet program that was released on a microcomputer that turned it into a more serious thing than just a hobby for computer specialists of that time. It is considered a killer app for Apple and it contributed to the further development of spreadsheet programs on the computer. This program combined the technologies that were processing spreadsheets on microcomputers and it was completely new for a computer in the 1980-s. Those features attracted economists, market specialists and other workers who were using spreadsheets during their work and that made the program more popular. Approximately 1 million copies were sold overall. Unfortunately, it was completely abandoned after Lotus Software has made an improved version of the spreadsheets called Lotus 1-2-3 the same as VisiCalc this program became extremely popular and after some time had also suffered a decline because of the development of Microsoft EXCEL
1980-s: Commodore 64
In 1982 a home computer named Commodore 64 was introduced to the market. It is famous for its highest sales at the times because of its prevalence in regular stores and ease of usage for a regular customer. Such good sales of this model influenced the further development of computer technology making some of it suitable for regular customers. This computer also popularised the development of applications, development tools and video games. The Commodore 64 has an 8-bit MOS 6510 processor including the RAM with the size of 64 KB. In addition, the computer had the ability to increase the amount of memory with cards and it could display a palette of 16 shades of colours on a screen with a resolution of 320 × 200 pixels thanks to the VIC-II processor.
Sources list:
Harald Sack. (January 1, 2018). “How the ARPANET became the Internet”. SciHi Blog. (Access date: 27.01.2022). http://scihi.org/arpanet-became-internet/
“ARPANET – The First Internet”. Livinginternet. (Access date: 27.01.2022). https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_arpanet.htm
Brandon Griggs. (May 9, 2011). “The Commodore 64, that '80s computer icon, lives again”. (Access date: 28.01.2022). https://web.archive.org/web/20141224073113/http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/05/09/commodore.64.reborn/
Tom Hormby. (September 25, 2006). “VisiCalc and the Rise of the Apple II”. LowEndMac. (Access date: 30.01.2022). https://lowendmac.com/2006/visicalc-and-the-rise-of-the-apple-ii/
