Life, the in's and out's of

My Life, Your Life, Our Life

J.C.R. Licklider was an MIT visionary who back in 1962 first proposed a global network of computer. In late ’62 he had moved over to DARPA or Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop the idea. It was in 1965 that Lawrence Roberts of MIT connected a computer in Massachusetts with a computer in California over a dial-up telephone line. It was found that the circuit switching on the telephone lines was inadequate and Kleinrock’s packet switching theory was confirmed. Bob Kahn proposed TCP/IP which was further developed by Kahn and Vint Cerf and others throughout the 1970’s and it was a result of this that the internet matured. TCP/IP was to replace the Network Control Protocol and became the standard by 1983. With the introduction of the Microsoft browser in Windows 98 made the internet easier to use and gave Bill Gates at Microsoft a realisation on the enormous growth of the internet and they have had to endure many court cases over their dominance. Almost most devices these days are able to connect to the internet and the rapid growth over the last few years of the wireless access, with many hotels offering free Wi-Fi “hot spots”, there seems to be no-end for the internet and its capabilities.

The Isle of Man is thought to have become an island around 85,000 years ago after glaciers melted cutting Britain off from continental Europe and causing sea levels to rise. The earliest people can be traced on the Isle of Man, is around middle stone age, also known as Mesolithic Period. Over the years the Isle of Man has been dominated by the British, Irish, Scandinavian, Scottish and English.

Isle of Man Flag

With the Iron Age brought the beginning of the Celtic influence and it is though the first Celtic inhabitants were the Brythonic tribes from the mainland of Britain.  It is believed that the modern day Manx language came about after the invasion or immigration.

After nineteen years of Anglo-Spanish war the Treaty of London finally brought a conclusion. Both Philip III and James I inherited the war from there predecessors Queen Elizabeth (died in 1603) and Philip II (died 1598) and were keen to bring an end to the conflict. Signed on 18th May 1604 the negotiations took place at Somerset House in London.

The Anglo-Spanish conflict was not as simple as it had connections with several other conflicts, the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands, the French Wars of Religion, and the Nine Years War in Ireland. Spain was to get the more favourable terms of the treaty. The treaty also brought an end of Spain’s hope of restoring Roman Catholicism in England to an end. Unfortunately peace between England and Spain only lasted until 1625.

On 28th June 1919 British politician David Lloyd George, senior French representative Georges Clenceau and American president Woodrow Wilson Signed the Treaty of Versailles. With Europe devastated and 750,000 British soldiers killed and 1,500,000 wounded, the treaty was intended as a peach settlement after World War One (1914 – 1918). The treaty was named after its place of signing, the Versailles Palace near Paris, France. The palace was chosen because of its size and the hundreds of people involved.

A lot of anger and bitterness was aimed at Germany, not just because of the war but because of the Spanish flu that ran through Europe in mid-1918 killing more than 25 million people.