People often make fun of Al Gore for claiming to have invented the Internet, even though they were twisting his words and he was largely responsible for the Internet taking off by tirelessly promoting it.
I think you could go back even further and argue that Napoleon's optical telegraph system is the direct ancestor of today's Internet. After all it led to the electromagnetic telegraph and Morse Code, which ultimately led to TCP/IP, packet switching and the World Wide Web!
Would telegraphy have failed to catch on, or wouldn't have caught on until later if Napoleon didn't use optical telegraphy to promote his conquests? Would the Internet have developed much later or not at all if it weren't for Napoleon?
I think you could go back even further and argue that Napoleon's optical telegraph system is the direct ancestor of today's Internet. After all it led to the electromagnetic telegraph and Morse Code, which ultimately led to TCP/IP, packet switching and the World Wide Web!
Would telegraphy have failed to catch on, or wouldn't have caught on until later if Napoleon didn't use optical telegraphy to promote his conquests? Would the Internet have developed much later or not at all if it weren't for Napoleon?