100 Documents That Changed the World

by Scott Christianson

  They called it the Apple Computer Company.

  Their first product was a kit that computer hobbyists could purchase for $666 to assemble their own microcomputer, which they called the Apple I. Sold as an assembled circuit board, it lacked even such basic features as a keyboard, monitor and case. But the machine had some novel features, including its use of a TV screen as the display system. The Apple I was also easier to start up than other machines on the market and faster than the teleprinters used on contemporary machines of that era. Computer freaks marvelled at its masterful design.

  Although they were operating on a shoestring, Jobs and Wozniak were able to make and sell 200 of the machines at a good profit, which got their venture off on the right foot.

  The Apple Computer Company was legally incorporated in California on 3 January 1977.

  Apple, Inc. went on to help spur the world’s personal computer revolution. It grew to become a leading multinational corporation that manufactures consumer electronics, personal computers, computer software and commercial servers; it is also a digital distributor of popular media content. Apple’s core product lines include the iPhone smart phone, iPad tablet computer, iPod portable media player, and Macintosh computer line. Since its founding it has remained one of the world’s most innovative companies.

  Woznick left the company in 1981 and Jobs passed away in 2011. Yet as of March 2013 Apple was the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization, with over 72,800 full-time employees and a value of more than $415 billion.

  In 2010 the company’s original founding legal documents from 1976, signed by Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne, were sold at auction for $1.4 million.

  An original Apple I, including operating instructions and a photo signed by Steve Wozniak, sold at Christie’s in 2014 for $360,000.

  Internet Protocol

  (1981)

  A bushy-bearded and laid-back computer engineer from Los Angeles writes a 45-page technical document establishing how the Internet will work and what its culture will be – based on cooperation, openness, tolerance, simplicity and integrity. His fellow Internet pioneers call him ‘God of the Internet’.

  Although he was barely known outside computer circles, Jon Postel (1943–98) was a world shaker. In 1969 he helped set up the first node on the ARPANET, which was the precursor to the modern Internet, and over the next 20 years he was as responsible as anyone for establishing both the technical protocols that make the Internet work and for founding the Internet community to which billions of users belong.

  In 1981 Postel wrote a 45-page technical document titled ‘RFC: 791’ – the Internet Protocol for short – which built on the work of his fellow computer scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, and it was approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force as the Transfer Control Protocol (TCP/IP).

  There already existed a means of sending messages from one computer to another via a small network of linked computers, however, that activity was originally intended to carry out only a limited set of activities. All of the network’s members were involved in government work. Under Postel’s TCP/IP, the ‘Internet’ was transformed into a network connecting networks that freely moved data around, unchanged and unexamined, according to basic standards that gave it structure and made it function efficiently. The TCP/IP determines the way data is moved through a network. The new Internet was simpler to implement, subscribe to and maintain. ‘In general,’ he wrote, ‘an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior, and liberal in its receiving behavior.’

  After the new network was tested, in November 1981 Postel published a transition plan whereby the 400 ARPANET hosts were to be migrated from the older NCP protocol to TCP/IP by 1 January 1983, after which point all hosts not switched would be cut off. The transition went smoothly.

  After Postel’s untimely death in 1998, Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist who is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, said:

  Those of us who came into the Internet after its beginning inherited not only a wonderful idea and technology, but also a wonderful society, sets of values and ways of working which are only too rare elsewhere. Jon Postel stood at the centre of this, not only in his work – the service he performed as a public trust, but also for the things which, in doing that, he stood for. The concept that some things belong to everybody. Doing things because they are the right thing to do. Tolerance of different opinions – and so on – now known as the Internet culture. His death leaves us with a heavy responsibility to continue that tradition.

  Two pages from the 1981 document and a photograph from 1994 showing Jon Postel, ‘God of the Internet’, pointing to a hand-drawn map of the Internet’s top-level domains.

  Two Plus Four Treaty

  (1990)

  Forty-five years after the end of a world war started by Germany’s aggression, and the division of the country by occupying powers, will the two Germanys and the four victors agree that Germany should once again become united? And if so, on what basis?

  Upon its defeat in 1945, Germany was split into two separate areas, with the East controlled by the communist Soviet Bloc and the West aligned with the capitalist European Community. Berlin was divided into two sectors that later became separated by the Berlin Wall. West Germany rose to become an ‘economic miracle’ while East Germany’s Soviet-style police state made less economic progress but still performed relatively well compared to other communist countries.

  In 1989, however, amid a period of loosening grip by the Soviet Union, a rebellion of East Germans known as the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ suddenly brought a spontaneous dismantling of the Wall on 9 November, followed by rapid transitions to democratic rule. During the tumult, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl called for the unification of East (German Democratic Republic, GDR) and West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany, FRG) – a move carrying great potential implications for the world, given a united Germany’s two previous wars.

  On 18 May 1990, the two German states agreed to a monetary, economic, and social union, which amounted to West Germany annexing East Germany, thereby assuming responsibility for the final transition from communist rule. This ‘Treaty Establishing a Monetary, Economic and Social Union between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany’, took effect on 1 July 1990.

  Discussions had been going on for months in the four nations that had occupied Germany, debating whether German reunification was a good idea. After 45 years, and the apparent easing of the Cold War, some of the fears and anger had subsided. But although public opinion in some countries remained sharply divided, official opposition was quickly overcome.

  The result was a formal agreement involving the two German states and the four occupying powers (the Soviet Union, France, United Kingdom, and the United States). The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland), best known as the ‘Two Plus Four Treaty’, was signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990.

  Under the new agreement, the four powers renounced all rights they held in Germany under the Potsdam Agreement, thereby allowing a united Germany to become a fully sovereign state. Germany also renounced any foreign claims to additional territory or other expansion. All Soviet forces were ordered to leave Germany by the end of 1994. The size of Germany’s armed forces was capped at no more than 370,000 personnel along with other restrictions. Germany also agreed to abide by the terms of the United Nations Charter.

  The treaty took effect on 15 March 1991.

  Afterwards, an account of the unification by the German government concluded: ‘When the last allied troops left Berlin in August and September 1994, it was clear the postwar era was well and truly over.’

  The German Reunification Agreement (above) culminated in the Two Plus Four Treaty, which was signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990 (right).

  First Website

  (1991)

  A young English computer software consultant and s
ome of his colleagues employed at the headquarters of a major European particle physics research laboratory in Switzerland establish the world’s first ‘website’ to try to convince skeptics to buy into their newfangled concept of the World Wide Web – but can their early digital documents be recovered for posterity?

  In 1989 a young English computer software consultant employed at the headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) outside Geneva received permission from his supervisor to develop his idea for a project called ENQUIRE, which was designed to facilitate large-scale automatic data sharing among research scientists scattered across the globe, based on the futuristic concepts known as ‘hypertext’ and ‘hyperlinks’. Although CERN’s stated purpose was to operate the world’s largest particle physics laboratory for its 21 European member states and Israel, the world-class research organization also carried out some groundbreaking activities in data sharing technology.

  Berners-Lee called his new idea ‘The World Wide Web’, or W3, defined as ‘a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access.’ He and his Belgian colleague, Robert Cailliau, used CERN equipment including a NeXT computer and router to create through the Internet what they called a ‘website’. The CERN website went online in 1991. It described the basic features of the web, informed its users how to access other members’ documents and how a new member could set up their own server. The original NeXT machine – the world’s first web server – is still at CERN, and the World Wide Web with zillions of websites is everywhere.

  One might say that the rest is history. Except Berners-Lee and his colleagues did not keep track of their early web pages, so those interesting pieces of history were lost. But a team at CERN is trying to restore the original webpage and other pieces of memorabilia from the earliest days, in an effort to preserve some of the digital assets that are associated with the birth of the web. ‘For a start,’ the project explains:

  we would like to restore the first URL – put back the files that were there at their earliest possible iterations. Then we will look at the first web servers at CERN and see what assets from them we can preserve and share. We will also sift through documentation and try to restore machine names and IP addresses to their original state. Beyond this we want to make http://info.cern.ch – the first web address – a destination that reflects the story of the beginnings of the web for the benefit of future generations.

  In 1993 CERN delighted computer users everywhere when it decided to relinquish all intellectual property to its invention of the World Wide Web, thereby putting the software in the public domain for everyone to use for free.

  Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1994, with an early version of the World Wide Web software.

  The homepage of the first website described itself as an ‘information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.’

  The 6 August 2001 memo is one of the most historically significant documents associated with 9/11.

  ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US’

  (2001)

  On 6 August 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency delivers the President’s Daily Brief to George W. Bush at his Texas ranch, warning that Osama bin Laden is preparing a major attack against the United States. Disclosure of the document will fuel speculation about possible negligence by the Bush administration.

  Eight months after America suffered the deadliest attack in its history, CBS Evening News revealed the existence of a secret memo dated 36 days before 9/11, which had warned President George Bush that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were plotting an imminent terrorist assault against the United States.

  The President’s Daily Brief in question, dated 6 August 2001, was later declassified and released to the 9/11 Commission in April 2004 and published in redacted form in the 9/11 Commission Report on 22 July 2004. The report showed that the top-secret document, presented to Bush that day by the Central Intelligence Agency, had also carried an ominous heading: ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US’. The two-page cryptic warning, written by CIA Senior Analyst Barbara Sude, mentioned the World Trade Center and Washington as targets and cited bin Laden’s desire to hijack a US aircraft. It also stated that bin Laden had implied in interviews since 1998 that his followers would follow the example of 1992 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and ‘bring the fighting to America’.

  The memo was later described as ‘perhaps the most famous presidential briefing in history.’ It was also the only PDB which the Bush administration released to the public. Today it is considered one of the most historically significant documents associated with 9/11.

  Many Bush defenders later attempted to downplay criticism that the administration had ignored CIA warnings, claiming that the PDB of 6 August did not specify when or where the attack would occur.

  Further investigation by Kurt Eichenwald, a former New York Times reporter who gained access to additional PDBs of that period, concluded that Bush had previously received more than 40 other direct warnings about al-Qaeda attacks going back to the spring of 2001, yet he had not ordered any preventative action. Bush’s intelligence briefings were usually given in person by CIA Director George Tenet and usually attended by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Neither of them appeared to have taken any precautions either.

  ‘Could the 9/11 attack have been stopped,’ Eichenwald asked, ‘had the Bush team reacted with urgency to the warnings contained in all of those daily briefs? We can’t ever know. And that may be the most agonizing reality of all.’

  A poster in New York inspired by Bush’s comment following the attacks: ‘I want justice. And there’s an old poster out west that says, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”’

  Iraq War Resolution

  (2002)

  In the frenzied aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration wins a joint resolution from Congress which spells out the authorization for military action against Iraq. Viewed in hindsight, the document’s case for war may not appear as strong as it did then.

  Ayear after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Washington, the administration of President George W. Bush sought a joint resolution from Congress, just as President Johnson had done with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to justify US military action in Vietnam, and just as Bush’s father, President George H. W. Bush, had done before commencing the first Gulf War.

  Following his September 12 statement before the UN General Assembly asking for quick action by the Security Council in enforcing the resolutions against Iraq, Bush issued the document titled, ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution of 2002’, setting forth the basis for the United States to wage war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

  In response to the President’s proposals, HJ Resolution 114 – sponsored by Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), the House Speaker, and Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri), the House Minority Leader – was approved on 10 October, by a vote of 296 to 133. The following morning, SJ Resolution 46, sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and it was signed into law on 16 October.

  The sweeping resolution authorized President Bush to use the Armed Forces ‘as he determines to be necessary and appropriate’ in order to ‘defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.’

  The resolution cited several factors as justifying the use of military force against Iraq, among them that Iraq was ‘continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability’ and ‘actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability’ that posed a ‘threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region.’ It also pointed to Iraq’s ‘capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people.’ The document claimed that members of al-Qaeda
were ‘known to be in Iraq’, that Iraq was continuing to ‘aid and harbor other terrorist organizations’ and to ‘pay bounties to families of suicide bombers.’ It also said that the governments of Turkey, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia wanted Saddam Hussein removed from power.

  On 16 March 2003, the US government advised UN weapons inspectors to immediately leave Iraq, and on 20 March the US commenced a surprise military invasion of Iraq without declaring war.

  Historians continue to debate whether the authorization for war was justified, particularly given the failure of US forces to find weapons of mass destruction. Like the Tonkin Gulf resolution, the Iraq resolution remains one of the most controversial documents in American history.

  In his United Nations address of 12 September 2002, Bush referred to Iraq as a ‘grave and gathering danger’.

  A memo following Resolution 114, which authorized the president to ‘defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.’

  The first tweet was originally posted by Jack Dorsey on 21 March 2006: ‘just setting up my twttr’. Barack Obama composes the first presidential tweet under the watchful eye of Dorsey in July 2011.

  First Tweet

  (2006)

  A shy young entrepreneur has an idea for an instant messaging system that will enable any user to communicate brief text messages to the world via a cellphone. Then he sends out his first ‘tweet’ – never dreaming that it will make him a billionaire.