NETWORKING - A HISTORY
Did you know that the Oxford English dictionary has six separate definitions of the word ‘network’? So what do we mean when we talk about networking? Simply this: the exchange of information. More specifically we’re going to focus on the exchange of information via a chain of interconnected computers, machines or operations.

One of the simplest and earliest forms of networking occurred in 1588. It was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, that King Philip II of Spain attempted a hostile takeover bid of the country, in the form of the Spanish Armada. Civilians along the English coast lit signal fires, or beacons, to warn of the coming of the Spanish fleet.

Two hundred years later, Claude Chappé developed a sort of ‘visual telegraph’. The sending of non-physical messages was aided by Joseph Henry’s experimentation with magnetism, which led to Samuel Morse’s telegraph system. In the mid-19th century, George Boole clarified the binary system of algebra, which stated that any mathematical equations could be stated as simply true or false. All of these systems involved the compressing of information using code. With the advent of the telephone, both the philosophy and the basic technology for the Internet were in place. But much more work had to be done.