let's clear this up

I just have to talk about this because it is infuriating to me that someone would believe that a grown man would claim to have invented the internet when he obviously did not. So I did some research:


The comment made by Al Gore was this (in a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer):

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet.”



What he meant was that he was in Congress at the time of the invention of the Internet and he pushed the people to create it. The actual inventor of the internet was a man named Vincent Cerf. He is called “the Father of the Internet.” He is now the senior Vice President of MCI Worldcom. Vincent Cerf made this quote to back up Al Gore and his influence in the invention of the Internet: “The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President [AL GORE] in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator.”

There are countless men who actually were involved in the mechanical development of the internet who have backed up Al Gore’s statement. The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"

Therefore, clearly, it is ignorant to claim that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet because this WAS NOT what he claimed and WAS NOT what he meant.

Also, those who claim that Al Gore invented the Internet got their information from campaign statements made by President George W. Bush when he was up against Al Gore for the Presidential office. George W. Bush was expected to maintain a campaign based on honesty and integrity, but instead launched a full-scale attack on Al Gore using commercials and radio time claiming that Al Gore lied to the American people by claiming that he invented the Internet. Honestly, I am more ashamed of George W. Bush for making these claims than I am in Al Gore for making an ACCURATE statement about how he used his political position while in the United States Congress. Before George W. Bush stooped to the level he did, no one questioned the integrity of the remark made by Al Gore.