Happy 25th Birthday to the World Wide Web
Twenty-five years ago today – Tim Berners-Lee submitted a paper to his employer (CERN), which described a network (web) of computers that each had access to files – shared among each other. Little did he know that his idea would birth some of the greatest achievements (and bank accounts) the world had ever seen.
Although he pitched the idea to CERN, no-one was really interested – and thought it wasn’t a necessary use of time for a physicist… except his supervisor, who wanted Tim to spend more time on the project. In 1991, CERN released what is now known as the World Wide Web to the public. (Interesting Fact: WWW was almost “The Information Machine”, but was turned down as the initials spelled the name of the creator.)
Many people believe the World Wide Web and the Internet are one in the same, but there is a very distinct separation – since the Internet was developed by the United States government as a method of communication, and not necessarily a way to allow access to individual pages that would store documents. The first “Browser” was created by Mr. Berners-Lee, and was called “WorldWideWeb”.
The internet allowed a computer to be able to talk to another computer, similar to a phone – but it lacked the open-nature that Tim Berners-Lee envisioned. His plan, was to supply transparency – with servers hosting the “websites” that we have now grown accustomed to seeing with utter regularity.
These last twenty five years have been a whirlwind of growth – but it wasn’t all started by Google (click here for Google’s contribution to the 25th ‘birthday’ celebration). The first search engine was created in 1994, by a company called Netscape. They were able to create an easy way to ‘find’ information, in what was quickly becoming a massive mess of documentation – and with no other search engines to follow, they were able to create a lot of standards that you use now.
The first webpage was created by Tim Berners-Lee, and is still online… You can see it here.
(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
Nick LaBrant
Right now, Nick is probably neck-deep in website development, learning more about WordPress, and scribbling down his next “Tech Nickel” post. Feel free to contact him with any questions you might have – and he’ll do his best to get you an answer!
