Posted 14 February 2009 as a bare Vimeo embed. Updated in 2026: the original Flash embed no longer plays anywhere (Flash reached end of life in 2020), so here are the working links and a little of the story behind the film.
“History of the Internet” is an animated documentary by Melih Bilgil explaining the inventions that got us from time-sharing to file-sharing, from ARPANET to the Internet. It was produced as part of the PICOL project (Pictorial Communication Language), which set out to create a free, standardised icon set for digital communication — the flat pictogram style you see throughout the film.
Where to watch it today
- History of the Internet on Vimeo — the original upload, still live.
- Official PICOL upload on YouTube.
- Melih Bilgil’s own page for the film, with background material.
- picol.org — the icon project behind the film, still online.
Nearly two decades on it holds up well: the ARPANET-to-TCP/IP story it tells is still the canonical origin story, and the PICOL icons have become a period piece of late-2000s motion design in their own right.