{"id":1599,"date":"2020-10-15T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2020-10-15T15:51:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T15:51:43","slug":"world-wide-web-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/world-wide-web-history\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things to Know About World Wide Web History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Statista<\/a> reports more than half of the global population is connected to the World Wide Web. But how did the web go from being a proposal to a network that changed the entire world? Let’s look at web history…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

World Wide Web history (or “web history”) is a fascinating topic. Back in the day, when Tim Berners-Lee had spun up the first web server, a handwritten note in red ink ensured availability: \u201cThis machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!<\/a>\u201d Today, we have large data centers across the globe that powers our virtual world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Wide Web has evolved into a huge mesh of interconnections \u2014 a web \u2014 that continues to grow and is used for various reasons. The World Wide Web is where you can do everything from ordering food online to lending voice to marginalized communities. Of course, with the evolution of the web, we\u2019ve also seen the massive growth of spamming activities and cybercrimes. However, that\u2019s a topic for a different day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, we\u2019re going to clear up a few common misconceptions about the web and share some interesting facts about the global network that we use on a daily basis. We\u2019ll also answer your questions about who created the World Wide Web and provide a web history timeline of key events in the history of the web. But first, a bit of World Wide Web history!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The History of the Web (and the Internet It\u2019s Built Upon)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"A
A great piece of web history. This photo is of the world’s first web server. Image source: Robert Scoble from Half Moon Bay, USA \/ CC BY (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0<\/a>). Used via the WikiMedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t talk about the history of the web without first talking about the internet. In 1960, J. C. R. Licklider<\/a>, a psychologist and computer scientist, anticipated advances in information systems. Licklider envisioned future libraries being interconnected via \u201cwide-band communication lines,\u201d a concept upon which the internet is built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of years later, he was appointed as the head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense\u2019s Advanced Research Projects Agency. (ARPA was later renamed DARPA \u2014 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency \u2014 in 1972.) The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) designed by ARPA was one of the first networks to implement the TCP\/IP protocol suite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1969, with the first ARPANET<\/a> link getting established between the University of California and the Stanford Research Institute, the journey towards a decentralized interconnected system had begun. As the ARPANET system stabilized, more and more hosts were added to the network. By 1981, there were more than 200 connected systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ARPANET wasn\u2019t perfect \u2014 it was used by different types of computers that weren\u2019t always interoperable due to differences in hardware, software, and operating systems. It\u2019s like trying to have a conversation with a group of people who are speaking different languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A World Wide Web History Timeline<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So, who created the World Wide Web? This honor goes to Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee<\/a>, a then-consultant at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Conseil Europ\u00e9en pour la Recherche Nucl\u00e9aire).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific American<\/a><\/em> reports that Berners-Lee had stumbled upon the idea for hypertext after coming home from high school one day when his father was working on a speech. The topic of the speech was about how computers might intuitively make connections based on the hypertext principle, similar to a human brain. The idea stayed with him and became the inspiration for the creation of the World Wide Web as we know it today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web History \u2014 The 1980s<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 1980, when Berners-Lee was consulting for CERN, he wrote a program called Enquire<\/a> to track the numerous scientists working there and their interrelated projects. The program checked for specific keywords, and if they were found, their locations in the documents were interlinked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1984, Berners-Lee returned to work full-time at CERN<\/a> after three years at John Poole\u2019s Image Computer Systems Ltd., where he worked on computer networks, graphics, and communication software. By this time, Paul Mockapetris had already developed the domain name system (DNS). Lee\u2019s vision was to create a global information space<\/a> that would enable users across the world to access information stored on computers anywhere. The stage was set for the formation of the World Wide Web with HTML as its common publishing language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1989, Berners-Lee circulated the first draft of the paper \u201cInformation Management: A Proposal\u201d<\/a> for comments at CERN. The document voiced concerns relating to information loss and talked about a distributed hypertext system-based solution. The proposal was reformulated the next year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Web History \u2014 The 1990s<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By the end of 1990, Berners-Lee, with the help of Robert Cailliau, had developed the first browser\/editor called WorldWideWeb, along with a server and line-mode browser<\/a>. The first client-server communication over the internet took place in December 1990. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it was mainly popularized and made accessible to the masses after the release of the Mosaic web browser. ZDNet reports<\/a> that the browser was developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina on Jan. 23, 1993. Previously, the web was a collection of text pages linked together, but with Mosaic, the images were displayed alongside text. (However, the ZDNet article is quick to note that there are several other browsers that compete for the title of being the first graphical web browser. These include ViolaWWW, Erwise, and Cello.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 30, 1993 marks the date when the World Wide Web became public. History.com reports<\/a> that this is when Berners-Lee \u201creleased the source code for the world\u2019s first browser and editor.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 1993, JumpStation, created by Jonathon Fletcher, was released. It was the first web search engine that employed crawling, indexing, and searching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)<\/a>, an international community that develops open standards for realizing the web\u2019s long-term potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A web history timeline for the evolution of the World Wide Web.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Did You Know the Following Web History?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n