The earliest electronic computer was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) which made its debut in 1946. Mechanical computers date back much further.
The Internet was a research project begun by the U.S. military and educational institutions. Its original purpose was to develop a computer network that would survive an enemy attack that might take out one, or more computers, and not take down the entire network. The concept began to take form in the late 1960s, and was known as either ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork) or DARPANET (Defense Advanced...). Until the project was turned over to the National Science Foundation (NSF), it was a closed network in that only members of the military, contractors and educational institutions were allowed on it. Even into the 1980s, any suggestion of commercial use would subject the violator to being "blacklisted," which would deny them access to the system.
In 1995, the project was opened up to the public, and to commercial endeavors. Two years earlier, Tim Berners-Lee had developed the concept of HyperText, and Marc Andreessen wrote Mosaic, the first widely-used browser (and still the underpinning for Netscape/Mozilla), and the Worldwide Web (www, or more precisely, w3) was born.
That's the "short history" in a time and space alloted. The dates are off the top of my head, and I may be off by a year or two. But there are certainly many histories available on the web, and you can go to the source itself, The Internet Society.
