@Janeishly @Lightfighter Jan 1 1983 is usually the date named as the "birthday of the Internet", when ARPANET switched to using TCP/IP so it could share traffic with any other network using that protocol.

Usenet started before then in 1980, spreading from BBS to BBS via dial-up users uploading and downloading the posts.

The Web came later in 1989, using the Internet so you could click on a link in one document to jump to a document on a completely different machine.

Before then to use the Internet, you had to know where the machine that had thing you wanted was, connect to it by FTP or Telnet, log in (the log in prompt would give you instructions, usually username "anonymous" and password your email address), read the "message of the day", and navigate through that machine's file system (this was how I first learned Unix commands).

MUDs were big then. I spent a lot of time on MOOs (object-oriented MUDs where you could create your own items by coding their behaviour in an object-oriented language).

Now get off my lawn you darn kids.