Why did we need Standardized Protocols?
Before the 1980s, there was no standardized networking protocols, each vendor had their own protocols.
So if you had, for example, an IBM computer, your computer wouldn’t have been able to communicate with a DEC computer because they were both using different networking protocols.
The Creation of the OSI Model
As a result, in the late 1970s, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) started working on something called the OSI model (Open Systems Interconnection).
The organization then published the OSI model document in 1984.
But the ISO wasn’t the only one working on a vendor-neutral networking model.
The Creation of the TCP/IP Model
The US Department of Defense had a research program called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency )in the 1970s, in which two scientists, Vint Cerf and Bob Khan, worked on data communication.
They created the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
They were then joined by university researchers and created the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) model.
OSI VS TCP/IP in Modern Networking
At first, companies were using either one or both models in their networks.
But after TCP/IP was chosen as the protocol standard for ARPANET in 1983, the use of the OSI model started declining and the TCP/IP model became the most used one by the end of the 1990s.
Today, network engineers still use the OSI model as a reference, but in practice the TCP/IP model is used.
References:
Wikipedia: OSI model
SCOS Training: History of TCP/IP
History Computer: TCP/IP Protocol Suite Explained: Everything You Need to Know