No one person invented the internet. However, certain figures contributed major breakthroughs.

Leonard Kleinrock, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a paper in 1961 on packet switching. This concept, essential to the internet, is that packets of data can be sent from one place to another based on address information carried in the data, much like the address on a letter.

J.C.R. Licklider was the first to describe an internet-like worldwide network of computers, in 1962. He called it the “Galactic Network."

Larry G. Roberts created the first functioning long-distance computer networks in 1965. He designed the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), under the auspices of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, as a means to share information on defense research.

Vint Cerf: 'web is running out of addresses'

Time is running out for a smooth transition to a new system of addresses, according to the man known as the father of the web

• 340,282,366,920,938,000, 000,000,000,000,000, 000,000 new web addresses created by internet chiefs . . . so we won’t run out of space soon, then

• Who were the 'fathers of the internet'?

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which moves data on the modern Internet, in 1972 and 1973. They went on to develop the IP protocol. If any two people “invented the Internet," it was Kahn and Cerf.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web with Robert Cailliau in 1990 while working at CERN. He wrote the first web browser and invented both the HTML markup language and the HTTP protocol used to request and transmit web pages between web servers and web browsers.

Al Gore did not invent the internet (and did not specifically claim to have done so) but he did play a substantial part, when in Congress, in overseeing the US legal framework and other government issues related to the internet.

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