In 1989, work began on what some would say is the most impactful technological invention to date: the World Wide Web. The project was led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was a computer scientist that worked at CERN, a scientific organization. Berners first started development on the Web when he realized the growing issue of needing to find which computer sored which document, especially as research grew. Thus, Berners looked towards the already existing but hardly developed the internet as a potential solution to his issue.
One year into its development cycle, Berners had already developed groundbreaking technology used today. The had created three fundamental components: HTML, URL, and HTTP. HTML was a language used to format and markup websites on the internet, URL was an address that linked to specific websites, and HTTP was the port that allowed for information retrieval. They also used this technology to create the world's first webpage (http://info.cern.ch/). Other researchers also created the line-browser, which allowed others to download and search the web without hassle.
Word of the new invention quickly spread when the WWW first became public, and many companies began to look towards it for both data storage and possible new business ventures. Luckily, the WWW arose at a time coinciding with the popular web browser Mosaic, allowing for simple "point-and-click" manipulations to webpages in order to browse the new Web. Netscape Navigator and InternetWorks also quickly arose as new browsers, boasting features such as the ability to open multiple tabs. Most notably, however, was the release of Internet Explorer and Safari, which both can pre-installed with new Windows and Mac computers, allowing direct access to the WWW. At this point, 10000 servers had been created on the web, and there were 10 million active users.
At this point, not all the questions of the WWW were solved. The major one puzzling CERN and Berners was the question of patenting the WWW, or to make it open source. Berners eventually realized, however, in order to utilize a technology made for the use of everyone, it had to be free. Making the technology proprietary would most likely have led to stunted web growth, as then only businesses or researchers could have produced websites on the WWW, rather than ordinary people. In 1993, this announcement was made public and sparked waves of creativity and innovation. The following year, Berners moved to MIT and founded W3C, an organization dedicated to the standard of a free and open web. This organization works to prevent the centralization of internet freedom and power, thus preventing censorship and anything that would reduce the openness of the web. As he tweeted during the 2012 Olympics, "This is for everyone."
https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/
https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/short-history-web
https://www.britannica.com/topic/World-Wide-Web
https://www.history.com/news/the-worlds-first-web-site
You blog was very insightful! I wanted to look a little deeper into the other browsers that slowly made their debut in the 90s. After the creation of the World Wide Web in 1990, Lynx was introduced in 1992 as a text-based browser with no graphic content. Faced with this problem, Mosaic was introduced a year later; this time, this browser allowed images to be embedded within text. Then, as you mentioned, Internet Explorer was introduced by Microsoft in 1995, while Apple's Safari came out in 2003. Since then, numerous other web browsers appeared, such as Firefox in 2004 and the familiar Google Chrome in 2008.
ReplyDeleteSide note: As I was looking at these web browsers, however, I also became curious about the differences between the Web and the Internet. After flipping through a series of confusing analogies, I found that the simplest explanation was that while the Internet was collection of "networks," the web served as a way for people to access or update parts of that "network." Maybe you have a better analogy?
Source:
https://crossbrowsertesting.com/blog/test-automation/history-of-web-browsers/
https://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/Web_vs_Internet.asp
I really enjoyed reading this blog post! Its really interesting how far we've come in APUSH, and how things we are learning about increasingly impact our modern-day lives. Really good job!
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