The late Professor Peter Kirstein, the founder of UCL Computer Science, writes an in-depth retrospective for The Conversation on the early days of the Internet, in this up-to-now unpublished feature. British computer scientist and Internet Hall of Fame inductee Peter Kirstein died in January 2020 at the age of 86, after a nearly 50-year career at UCL. A few years before he died, he was commissioned by then Conversation technology editor Michael Parker (now director of operations) to write an in-