Joel Orr's World

From this important historical site:

…Perhaps the most important and influential person in the development of the Internet was a wealthy industrialist by the name of E H Beardie. Although Beardie did not invent the Internet, he is credited as the driver of its growth from a localized technology to a national and ultimately global network and is considered by most Internet historians to be the "Father of the Internet".  
 

Born in 1822 in Philadelphia, Beardie was the first and only son of a migrant dock worker and a skilled one-armed seamstress named Mary-Lou.

Beardie opened his first mill at the young age of 14 and through zeal and cunning rapidly expanded to be one of the largest mill owners in the world.

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E H Beardie