History of the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the World Wide Web, this great discovery happened in 1989, about 20 years after the first internet connections were established. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/history_of_the_Internet#ARPANET)) Berners was a software engineer at CERN, (HTTP://PUBLIC.WEB.CERN.CH/PUBLIC/) a large particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Thousands of researchers traveled to CERN to participate in experiments for extended periods and then return to their home facilities to crunch data. All researchers used their own computers; it was a challenge for CERN to accommodate all the incompatible computers which had to all work with CERN’s main frame. Berners was responsible for helping everyone to work together. (World Wide Web Foundation) He thought it would be simpler if the computers could share their information directly but back then computers didn’t communicate with each other. In 1989 Berners submitted a proposal called “Information Management: A Proposal.” (Greenemeier)
When thinking about the incompatibility problem, Berners realized it would be great if they could share the data from their home labs and run experiments at CERN over a network from wherever they are located. The internet already existed, just a set of lines and protocol for sending information over those wires. Berners idea was to implement a plan so the CERN computers could talk on the internet. His idea would be applied that ran on the internet. Other internet apps did exist include: file transfer protocol, or FTP, and email.
Berners’ ” Information management; A proposal” changed the internet with specific set of technologies that would make the internet more accessible and useful to its everyday users. (Greenemeier) “Berners’ proposal was not accepted right away. It took nearly two years before he and other computer scientists completed the first successful communication between a web browser and server via the internet.” (Greenemeier) He then had to lobby others to create more Web browsers and servers. Berners created three fundamental innovations that remain the foundation of the web today. These fundamental innovations include: HTML, URI, and HTTP. (Greenemeier)
Tim Berners-Lee, CERN (circa 1991) inventor of the WWW.
The first web page was served by the end of 1990. In 1991 users of CERN joined the new web community. In 1993 CERN announced the royalty free use of the World Wide Web and this would be a technology everyone could use.
The internet was created to test new networking technologies developed to eventually aid the military. The Arpanet, advanced research projects agency network, became operational in 1968 after it was conceived by Leanard Roberts (Watrall, T101, 2/2). Ever since the Arpanet began in 1968, it grew exponentially in the number of connected users. Traffic and host population became too big for the network to maintain, due to the killer application known as email created in 1972. The outcry for a better way sparked the development of the NSFNet. The National Science Foundation Network replaced Arpanet, and ultimately had many positive effects. This early division of the internet spread its netw...
Computers were in development from as early as the 1950’s, but the general public wouldn’t hear of the World Wide Web until the 1980’s. By the year 2000, the internet was accessible to the general public from their home computers. It was used mainly for e-mailing, online shopping and research, but with its growing popularity, the World Wide Web was quick to expand its content. We can now, in the present day, access the internet on a number of platforms such as mobile phones, laptops and PCs, and even Smart Televisions, which makes a vast difference to the platforms people used 30 years ago.
The World Wide Web started as an idea that focused around the government’s need to communicate if there was a real war. In 1964 the Cold War was at its peak, the Advanced Researched Projects Agency, or ARPA began researching and developing a way to get computers to “communicate with each other,” this is how it all started (The Internet's History and Development). The government scientists who were, “developing networking technology in the 1960's knew that what they were building would be far bigger than themselves; nobody, however, could have predicted the explosion in Internet access and interest in the past several years” (The Internet’s History and Development).
Born in the mind of an MIT professor in the early years of the 1960's, "the internet-or net, for short"(Jonscher,154)-has been maintained as the information-technology center throughout the closing of the twentieth century connecting people and ideas throughout the world in little more than the stroke of a key and faster than the blink of an eye . Imagine the possibility of transferring one bank account to another with the click of a mouse-from New York to Hong Kong, or buying a car or even a house off a computer screen, or talking to a long-forgotten aunt on the other side of the globe for hours upon hours at zero cents a minute, or, especially, the unimaginable possibility of delivering a message to everyone in the world, one person at a time and as fast as that message can be forwarded: these were the dreams of J.C.R. Licklider; the dreams that became reality (Jonscher, 154). In 1966, just four years after the origination of the first idea, Licklider's dream of the Internet was adopted by Larry Roberts, project manager for the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), and together they became the pioneers of the "Galactic Network". When Robert's proposal was accepted by the other members of the agency, a plan went into effect to create the "ARPANET", which in time became what we know today as the Internet. The first remnants of the Internet began with defense contractors and universities, beginning with UCLA in 1969. (jonscher, 155)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee was born on June 8, 1955 in London, England. His parents were Mary Lee Wood and Conway Berners-Lee who were both Mathematicians and Computer Programmers. He was raised as only child and went to Emmanuel School in Wadsworth, England. He was a student at Oxford University where he studied physics and got his Bachelors of Science in Physics. While there he made computers out of spare parts. He was banned from the schools computers because he was caught hacking. After he graduated he got a job as a software engineer at CERN,a European organization for Nuclear Research and large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. There many scientists engaging in tests at CERN and returning to their labs around the globe, these scientists were eager to share and exchange results and information but it was very difficult to send masses of information. Tim realized this problem and saw the potential to create something. Tim berners-lee, understood the untouched potential of all of computers connected together through the power of the Internet.
According to World Wide Web pioneer Timothy Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web's initial purpose was to provide "an interactive world of shared information through which people could communicate with each other and with machines" (1996: p 1). Originally developed at the European Center of Nuclear Energy (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, the Web emerged in 1989 as a way for Dr. Berners-Lee and some of his distant associates to work on particle physics projects. He designed a method of links that was usable by all computers and hypertext was the language; we know it as http. With its knowledge-sharing capabilities, the invention of the Web quickly spread to universities and science research communities all over the world. Since it was primarily used for text, actual web design in these early days was not particularly significant. Around this same time, researchers at the National Center for Super Computing Applications at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana also worked and researched web technology. In 1992, only 26 hosts were serving web sites.
Although the exact date of origin of the Internet is not established, its history began with the development of electronic computers in the 1950s. Leonard Kleinrock from MIT published a paper on packet-switching theory in July 1962, and the first book on the subject in 1964. Packet-switching is defined as a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data—regardless of content, type, or structure, into suitably sized block, called network packets. A network packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network. Kleinrock argued that the theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits. In 1965, MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts worked with Thomas Merrill to create the first wide-area computer network ever built, which determined the attempt to make computers talk to each other as possible. In 1967, Roberts published his plan for the ARPANET, Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Due to Kleinrock’s development on the packet-switching theory, his Network Measurement Center was selected to be the first node on ARPANET. By the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together to the ARPANET, and the developing Internet was ready to launch. This eventually led to the development...
The Internet is the latest and most powerful invention that has expanded the world’s communication. It has greater effects on our civilization than any other previous inventions. It has reached every corner of the globe. It has interconnected the world and created an electronic village. Unlike any previous human inventions, the Internet is a wide common resource for all people. Anyone can say whatever he/she wants to say and this can be heard by anyone else with access to the Internet. Cairncross (2001) states “never has anyone invention shot from obscurity to global flame in quite this way” (p.75). According to Cairncross, in 1990, only a few academics had heard of the Internet. In 1995, it was possible to write a book on the future of the computer and communications industries without mentioning the Internet. However, by 2000, “perhaps 385 million people around the world had acquired a new global source of information on a giant scale” (p.75). Thanks to the Internet, the 21st century people live in a world-wide community. In this community, there is no domination of one language or culture over another. Nothing can govern the type of information permissible on the Internet. The Internet has really become important for all of the people in the world. In order to understand the evolution of the Internet, a short history of the people and communities that brought the Internet may be useful as well as essential. In the following paragraphs we will provide a brief introduction about the history of the Internet; why it was started and how it came to be.
The internet has come a long way since the development of Web 1.0, there have been further developments in the World-wide web such as web 2.0, and the current development of Web 3.0.
Basically the web is a service that has been used through the Internet network, as like many other kind of services, however the World Wide Web became very popular when it arrived in the 1980s by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee, because the technology of the computer networks has been developing effectively and repeatedly. Furthermore, the web beca...
The internet, initially developed by researchers at MIT and UCLA, had first purposes as a communications system between participating Universities. Walt Howe, Director of Libraries at Babson College, explains that the use of the system was limited to engineers, scientists, and those with the complex knowledge of computer operating systems. Because of the complexity involved many attempted to create a more user efficient system, one that home users could adopt. The most modern and user friendly system was pioneered around 1991 at University of Minnesota as a tool to access files and information local...
Tim Berners-Lee's vision for the World Wide Web was close to a P2P network in that it assumed each user of the web would be an active editor and contributor, creating and linking content to form an interlinked "web" of links. The early Internet was more open than present day, where two machines connected to the Internet could send packets to each other without firewalls and other security measures. This contrasts to the broadcasting-like structure of the web as it has developed over the years. As a precursor to the Internet, ARPANET was a successful client-server network where "every participating node could request and serve content." However, ARPANET was not self-organized and it lacked the ability to "provide any means for context or content based routing beyond 'simple' addressed based
The Internet was first introduced in 1969 when a program called ARPA or Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPA had provided a way to communicate, through a network, with the country in case of a military attack had destroyed traditional communication. It also connected four United States universities and was used for research, education and government organizations. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson introduced E-mail. In 1973, Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) became the standard for computers to communicate over the Internet. In 1982 the word Internet is used for the first time. The domain name system (DNS) is introduced in 1984, which identified network addresses with .com, .org, and .edu. From that point on everything began to rapidly change. Things like America Online was developed, viruses start...
The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The Internet enables communication and transmission of data between computers at different locations. The Internet is a computer application that connects tens of thousands of interconnected computer networks that include 1.7 million host computers around the world. The basis of connecting all these computers together is by the use of ordinary telephone wires. Users are then directly joined to other computer users at there own will for a small connection fee per month. The connection conveniently includes unlimited access to over a million web sites twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There are many reasons why the Internet is important these reasons include: The net adapts to damage and error, data travels at 2/3 the speed of light on copper and fiber, the internet provides the same functionality to everyone, the net is the fastest growing technology ever, the net promotes freedom of speech, the net is digital, and can correct errors. Connecting to the Internet cost the taxpayer little or nothing, since each node was independent, and had to handle its own financing and its own technical requirements.
The internet has come along way since its birth back in 1969, from its start as a government network to the everyday life; it has proven to be one of the greatest inventions ever discovered. It has helped many people with an array of task ranging from everyday government usage, and personal web pages to the ever so expanding horizons of technology still being produced today. Between the good and the bad, the internet has improved the way of life, and will continue to improve throughout time.