Since computers filled rooms, computer scientists have been dreaming of remote access from a cloud. Here's how we got into the cloud and where we're headed next.

1. When computers filled whole rooms, it was difficult to imagine phones more powerful than lunar
landers, Star Trek communicators and C3PO put together. Yet even when single computers filled
a room, it seems computer scientists always dreamed of universal storage access in the cloud.
Here’s a look at the key
breakthroughs that have made
the rise of the cloud inevitable.
Idea
Hardware
Software & Media
In response to the
50’s
and60’s
launch of Sputnik,
the US forms the
Advanced Research
The first hard disk drive ever Products Agency
1956 launched: IBM Model 350
Disk File comes with IBM 305
RAMAC computer
1957
Early 60’s
1964 BASIC is invented by
John George Kemeny and John McCarthy:
Tom Kurtz An American computer
scientist sees computing
as a public utility
1966 Douglas Parkhill:
Parkhill's book, The Challenge Douglas
of the Computer Utility, Engelbart:
predicts many modern cloud invents the
ideas mouse
1968
1969 First message sent
on ARPANET:
The core network
that became the
70’s global internet
1970 The Floppy Disk
invented by
Alan Shugart
1971 Email first
developed by
Ray Tomlinson
Ethernet invented by First PC modem,
1973 Robert Metcalfe/ developed by
Xerox Dennis Hayes and
1977 Dale Heatherington,
first sold to hobbyists
Mobile
phones
Al Gore introduces invented
1978 the term “information
superhighway”
1979
80’s Standardised
MS-DOS concept of
invented worldwide
interconnected
1981 First IBM-PC TCP/IP networks
invented (AKA the Internet)
developed
1982
William Gibson, in his
Over 1000 short story “Burning Apple
web hosts Chrome”, coins the Macintosh
term "cyberspace" invented
1984
1985
CD-ROM
Microsoft invented
1986 First PC releases
virus found Windows
1988
Tim Berners-Lee
writes the proposal for the
World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee
90’s creates World Wide Tim Berners-Lee
Launch of Web and Internet writes the software
IMDB online protocol HTTP for world's first web
film database server, which came to
be known as CERN
1990
1992 First smartphone:
Web
1,000,000 Hosts IBM Simon
shown as a concept
product
1993 Launch of
Mosaic web
browser grants
widespread
First mass Invention of Internet access
commercial spam the Pentium
1994 spread by law firm processor
Canter and
Siegel Geocities,
1995 free web
hosting site,
launches
Launch of
Hotmail on
July 4th Windows 95
released with
Internet Explorer
Late 1990’s
Web commonly used as both
public and private file storage Launch of
1997 Web
20,000,000 Hosts
1998
Napster
popularizes file
00’s 2000 First smartphone, sharing over the
Touchscreen
Dot Com Bust Ericsson R380,
Internet
released. First
device to use an
open OS: Symbian
2001
Launch of
Wikipedia Amazon Web
2002 Service (AWS)
in the cloud
2003 Myspace
launched
2004 Popularisation of Facebook and
Web 2.0. John Flickr launched
Batelle and Tim
O’Reilly describe the
concept of
"the Web as a
Platform"
2005 popularizes free
online video
hosting and
sharing
2006 Google Docs
launches, putting
millions in direct
contact with Gartner
the cloud says cloud
2008 computing will be
as influential as
e-commerce
Google can reach
launches catalogue 1 trillion
of six million songs, web pages, but just a small
supported by ads fraction are indexed by the
search engine
300% growth
in ads for full-time cloud
computing positions
November 2009 - November 2010
2010
US Government
officials begin European Network and Information
mandating cloud Security Agency makes Cloud
adoption Computing recommendations for EU
governments.
2011
introduces the
concept of the Launch of
Web
584,000,000 Hosts
Unified Cloud
Experience
Apple iCloud
2012
Future
Google Drive release
expected, entering the
content storage market launched, F-Secure offering
operators and ISPs the cloud
as a service
2013 1 billion users share content in
a public cloud on Facebook
Services like Apple
iCloud and Google
Drive are tied to
mobile phones
The idea of a private cloud for each
individual becomes popularized
2014
$148.8B
Revenue for
cloud €115B
services
Gartner
predicts AUD139.2B
₤96B
The idea of private cloud for each
individual becomes popularized.
Privacy issues become more Consumers expect to want a
important and people are personal cloud that they can
more willing to pay for it. control and doesn’t track
them.
Sources: General
http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/modern_5.htm
http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/A-history-of-cloud-computing
http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/interactive/2009/oct/23/internet-arpanet
http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2011/02/a-history-of-cloud-computing/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciscoibsg/6101427547/
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=707508
Content | Anywhere http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
http://www.f-secure.com/content-anywhere