Did Al Gore Invent The Internet?

A frequent subject of jokes by late night hosts and political rivals is the myth that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet.  This article will help sort out the truth of Gore's contribution to the technology that even now allows us to read this article about this subject.

Al Gore  Jr, son of the Senior Al Gore who was a Senator from Tennessee, was in Law School at Vanderbuilt (in Nashville) when he decided to run for the House of  Representatives in 1975.  He won that election and went on to serve in the U S. House and later the Senate until 1993 when he became Bill Clinton's Vice-Presidential pick.

During his tenure as Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as "The Gore Bill") after hearing a 1988 report suggesting the creation of a National Research Network, which was submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA computer science professor, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET.   ARPANET, a connection of University Research Department data terminals and the Department of Defense, was first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969 and is the predecessor of the modern Internet. The Gore Bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the "information superhighway."  In ordinary terms, the existing infrastructure of interconnected computers was opened to commercial development.  This allowed everyday citizens to have email accounts and post web pages.

The creation of  the commercial Internet and the commercial exploitation of the cellular telephone spawned a phenomenal and robust economy for the next 6 years as America and then the rest of the World obtained personal computers, cellular phones and Internet web sites.  The Internet is responsible for billions of dollars of revenues for companies such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and others each year.

To clarify how the story got started and perhaps put an end to bad rap that Gore has received over the past many years, here is the official story of the remarks that triggered the myth which has endured to this day:

In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."  Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a Congressman Gore promoted the system we enjoy today,  not that he patented the science, though that's how the quotation has been manipulated.  Hence the disingenuous substitution of "inventing" for the actual language.  His remark, which was not well crafted at the time, was taken and manipulated successfully by the George W. Bush Presidential Campaign.  Subsequently, Al Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 Presidential Election, only to lose by Electoral Votes from the contested election in the State of Florida.

Much maligned over the past 10 years, Al Gore has recovered and gone on to win an Oscar for his film documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", a Grammy for his CD An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, and a Nobel Peace Prize (shared with the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 2007.

In 2005, Al Gore bought a satellite channel and created, along with partner Joel Hyatt, Currents TV, an IP video delivery system that is also available on Satellite and Cable worldwide.  The network features forward thinking content about world issues such as sexual orientation and environmental concerns.  In early June, it was announced that Al Gore is separating from his wife of 40 + years, Tipper.