What’s the Story with Al Gore Thinking He Invented the Internet?

The idea that Al Gore tried to claim credit for inventing The Internet™ is one of the funniest things to come out of American politics in the last thirty years, narrowly followed by the litany of people who have interacted with Ted Cruz at some time in their life and, as a consequence of that experience, really don’t care for the guy. But what, for those of us who were four years old when the interview in question happened, is the full story there?

Wikipedia doesn’t have a full page on this, but it does get its own section on the page, “Al Gore and information technology.” Here are excerpts from it:

Urban legend that Gore claims to have invented the Internet

In a March 9, 1999, interview with CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Gore discussed the possibility of running for President in the 2000 election. In response to Wolf Blitzer’s question: “Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley,” Gore responded:

“I’ll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.”

Alright, first thoughts: Wow. Wolf Blitzer existed in 1999. I always assumed he popped out around the time I was first exposed to CNN, a fully-formed aging-man-who-always-looks-like-he-is-wearing-a-sweater plucked from the vine that grows them on a secluded farm on the Vermont/New Hampshire border. Was Wolf Blitzer ever young? I don’t want to know. Nobody show me a clip from the interview. I need some boundaries in my understanding of history.

Back to the Wikipedia:

After this interview, Gore became the subject of controversy and ridicule when his statement “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” was widely quoted out of context…Gore’s actual words, however, were widely reaffirmed by notable Internet pioneers, such as Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, who stated, “No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President.”

Hmm…ok. More excerpts:

Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that “we don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he ‘invented’ the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet.”

***

In a speech to the American Political Science Association, former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: “In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is — and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.”

Sounds to me like Al Gore invented The Internet™.