The origins of the Internet go back to both the private and United States military research in 1960s.  The National Science Foundation of US and some private commercial organizations, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of USA in 1958 created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO), which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. At the IPTO, Lawrence Roberts started a project to make a network in 1965. In 1968 Roberts prepared a report called Resource Sharing Computer Networks which laid the foundation for the launch of the working of ARPANET in the following year. For the first time the ARPANET was interconnected between Kleinrock’s Network Measurement Center at the UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart’s NLS system at SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California in 1969. By the end of 1971there were already fifteen sites connected to the young ARPANET. The ARPANET was one of the eve networks of today’s Internet.

The term “Internet” describing a single global network originated in 1974   by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine of Stanford University. Bolt Beranek and Newman of ARPANET established TELENET operation in 1975, installing free public dial-up access throughout the US. TELENET was the first packet-switching network open to the general public. Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory also discovered the concept of packet switching in the early 1960s. Davies built a packet switched network in the UK called the Mark I in 1970.  Following the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, TELENET, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network service in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The first world wide network was operated by 1983. The opening of the NSFNET to other networks began in 1988.  In 1991, the World Wide Web project started by a European organization. The estimated population of Internet users is 1.97 billion as of 2010.

Mobile Phone:- A mobile phone, also called cell phone is an electronic device used for full duplex two-way radio telecommunications over a cellular network. A mobile phone allows its user to make and receive telephone calls to and from the public telephone network which includes other mobiles and fixed-line phones across the world. In addition to being a telephone, modern mobile phones also support many additional services, and accessories, such as SMS messages, e-mail, Internet access, gaming, Bluetooth, camera, MMS messaging, MP3 player, radio and GPS. In 2010 the number of mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide reached approximately 6 billion.

The first handheld cellular phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper, a researcher of Motorola in 1973, using a handset weighing 2 kg. Martin Cooper is considered to be the inventor of the first mobile phone. Cooper made the first call on a mobile phone on April 3, 1973. The first commercially automated cellular network was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979. The first digital 2G (second generation) cellular technology was launched in 1991 in Finland.  In 2001, the first 3G (Third Generation) was again introduced in Japan. 

Digital camera:- A digital camera or digicam is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It displays images on a screen immediately after they are recorded, storing thousands of images on a single small memory device, recording video with sound, and deleting images to free storage space. The Hubble Space Telescope and other astronomical devices are essentially specialized digital cameras.

Edward Stupp, Pieter Cath and Zsolt Szilagyi at Philips Labs in New York, constructed a flat-screen target for receiving and storing an optical image in 1968. Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak was the first person to attempt at building a digital camera in 1975. The camera weighed 3.6 kg, recorded black and white images.  With a resolution of 0.01 megapixels, it took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975.

Compact Disc:- A Compact Disc also known as a CD is an optical disc used to store digital data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since 1982. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold up to 80 minutes of uncompressed audio upto 700 MB of data. The technology was eventually adapted and expanded to encompass data storage CD-ROM, write-once audio and data storage CD-R, rewritable media CD-RW, Video Compact Discs (VCD), Super Video Compact Discs (SVCD), PhotoCD, PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD.

Sony, Japan, first introduced an optical digital audio disc in 1976. In 1979 Philips demonstrated ‘Philips Compact Disc’ in Netherlands. In 1983 CD players were released in the United States and other markets.

DVD:- DVD, also known as Digital Video Disc, is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storage. DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs), but are capable of storing almost seven times as much data.

DVD was invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Time Warner in 1995. The DVD Video format was first introduced by Toshiba in Japan in 1996, in the United States in 1997 and in Europe in 1998.

USB Flash Drive:- A USB flash drive, popular as Pen Drive, consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable. They are smaller, faster, have thousands of times more capacity than CDs and DVDs. Most USB flash drives weigh less than 30g. The storage capacities of a USB flash drive in 2010 can be as large as 256 GB.

Trek Technology of Singapore and IBM of US were the first to sell the USB flash drives in 2000. The Trek Technology sold these under the brand name “ThumbDrive”. IBM named these “DiskOnKey” which was developed and manufactured by the Israeli company M-Systems.