This interconnected method, known as hypertext, means that the user can navigate more easily through the available data. As the Internet has grown these resources have become a giant web of information available to those who learn how to get it. Currently two software programs, or browsers, exist to access this information Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Since Explorer is built into Windows, it is likely that your home computer will use it as the default browser, but here at the college, we use Netscape Navigator. Both programs are functionally the same and only differ slightly in how they operate, so once you learn one, you should have no problem adapting to the other.
Most people are surprised to learn that it began as a military project.
In 1969, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense was charged with the task of constructing a network that would connect the existing supercomputers being used for defense research. Various research facilities were connected to this network so that these computer resources could be shared. Gradually, other academic institutions joined the network and scientists began to realize that it could also be used as a communications tool. Eventually, the military split off and formed another network but their original system continued to grow as more and more organizations, schools and businesses joined in. In 1987, the National Science Foundation was charged by the U.S. Government to increase the capacity of the network to accommodate the one thousand networks that were then connected.