The Invention That Made the Internet Possible
In 1978, Dr. Roger Billings invented Universal Networking — the foundational technology behind how the modern internet shares information.
In this episode of ScienceLive, he tells the complete story for the first time, in his own words. It starts with a problem. J. Willard Marriott, founder of the Marriott Hotels empire, had 12 of IBM’s largest mainframe computers — the biggest the company made — and they still couldn’t keep up with reservation demand. IBM told him a 13th machine would crash the entire system. He needed a solution that didn’t exist yet. Dr. Billings invented one.
His concept was elegantly simple: instead of every computer trying to talk to every other computer simultaneously, create a dedicated “library” computer — what we now call a server — that any number of users could query independently. The result was a system that could scale to an unlimited number of users without overloading. He called it Universal Networking, patented it as U.S. Patent No. 4,714,989, and proved it worked by installing it at real businesses around the world using the Billings Microcomputer — one of the earliest personal computers ever built.
Today, every website, every app, and every internet transaction runs on this same client-server principle.
This is the story of one of the most important and least-known inventions of the 20th century — told by the man who invented it.
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I love being an acellus student
Very cool!!! I enjoyed this weeks video to learn more about the internet!
Thank you Dr Billings!
This was wonderful!
Here from tx
Amazing!!
We love watching every week!
this was a very interesting video excited for next weeks!
So awesome!!
Science live is so fun to watch!
What did they build the robot??
The internet is cool to learn about
Thank you for the scholarship! I appreciate being able to homeschool without it being a large price for my parents.
Amazing live!!! I love those
Greetings from the Dominican Republic.
I live for the internet
science is cool.
Science Live is so interesting!
I love this scholarship, it makes education so accessible while also providing the benefit of Science LIVE!
Very Interesting, thanks
loved it!!!!!!!
The robot made from the 3D printer is so cool I cant wait to see what it will get used for.
This live was interesting
This Science Live was great!
Amazing live as always!
i loved how we learned of the internet
Hi from Florida
wow this is so cool!
I love science live!
It was so interesting to learn about the internet!