History of The internet

How did the internet originate?

The Internet as it exists today began as a military network that was used to transmit data over long distances. That evolved into a text exchange between educational institutions.

Who were the people most responsible for creating it?

 The Internet was invented in the United States during the late 1950s to the 1970s by a group of researchers and scientists at the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) after the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik

What system immediately preceded the internet? What was its purpose?

By 1989 many of the new community networks had joined the Electronic Networkers Association, which preceded the Internet Society as the association for network builders. To make it easier to communicate between networks

What is an IP packet? What is it comprised of?

The Internet Protocol (IP) is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite.

 
All IP addresses are made up of four parts (quadrants) separated by dots, like this:
XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
where each XXX can be any number between 0 and 255. If you know binary, you will understand that each of these numbers are stored in 8 bits (binary digits), and the number of possibilities you can have is 2 raised to the power of 8, which is 256 (0-255).
 
Examples of IP addresses are:
192.168.66.5
127.0.0.1

What does TCP stand for? How does TCP deal with lost IP packets?

transmission control protocol: a protocol developed for the internet to get data from one network device to another; "TCP uses a retransmission strategy to insure that data will not be lost in transmission"

Why do computer people like everything in letters?

Because it is easier to remember words than numbers