Copyright © 1998 University of Pennsylvania Library. All Rights Reserved.  

	On February 14, 1946 the first modern computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania. (see Brief History)
	I, however, was not unveiled until 1952.

	The Internet (ARPANET officially) came into being in September 1969 when a computer at the Stanford Research Institute was connected to a computer at UCLA and the first host-to-host message was sent.  By the end of 1969 four computers were on the net.
	I, on the other hand, was trying to stay connected to my life as I entered my senior year of high school in Maplewood, Missouri.  I went to UMR in 1970 where I found students could reserve time on the school's calculator.
	Personal computers became a significant reality by the early 1980s and the Internet as we know it emerged in 1983.  I developed my skills as a woodworker and citizen on the edge-rejecting "technology," except for my saws, hammers, and drills of course.
	The Internet grew to nearly 1,000,000 hosts, and in 1991 the World Wide Web was released (developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN).

My woodworking stalled, and teaching work thrived. I was driving between 3 college campuses, teaching 8 to 10 courses of Introductory sociology, trying to help support a old house and a new daughter.

In 1992 Marc Andreessen designed a graphical interface called Mosaic (later to become Netscape) and the web rapidly grew from 100 or so hosts to millions.

	In about a year there were more than 65 million users of Mosaic.  Today, hundreds of millions use the Internet and the WWW. (A "census" of Internet connectivity by countries has been undertaken at regular intervals by Larry Landweber, Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA. Map 1991, Map 1997)
	I was still teaching 8-10 courses a semester and preparing for the arrival of my second daughter.