Soon scientists began to use it to work on research through e-mail, not long after the first mailing list appeared called SF-LOVERS (Webmaster@ISOC.ORG Internet). The ARPAnet as it was now called began to grow and by the 1980"s it began to link to other college and government networks. NSFnet (national science foundation network) and the newly founded Usenet were among the first to be connected. These links began the "ARPAinternet" later called the Internet. The Internet grew very rapidly over time and began to get out of government ownership and into privately owned hands. In 1990 ARPAnet was shut down but by this time the Internet had become completely public and no longer relied on the original ARPAnet, but it still used the TCP/IP technology developed by Cerf (Webmaster@ISOC.ORG Internet). .

             Usenet was a network similar to ARPAnet created by graduate students and faculty of the University of North Carolina and Duke University. The structure of Usenet followed the mailing lists of ARPAnet but was designed to store messages onto one accessible computer (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1999). Another difference was that in Usenet the nodes were not directly connected like ARPAnet but used phone lines to transfer information. Because of slow modems (300 bit per second) poor phone lines, messages would take up to a week to reach the receiver. By 1987, Usenet had grown, and linked to 5,000 sites and carried an average of 1,000 messages per day (www.vzinet.com Internet). .

             In 1993, Tim Lee (from Duke University) created an interface to the World Wide Web, that he called Mosaic. The Mosaic Web Browser put a completely new look on the Internet (www.davesite.com Internet). You could navigate the World Wide Web by clicking on links with the mouse. Even more important, it gave users the option to add "players" for sound, video clips, or anything else they wanted to add.

             Electronic mail, or E-mail as it is now commonly known, was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971 as a way of sending messages on the Internet to other online users.