The History Of The Internet And The

WWW Essay, Research Paper

The History of the Internet and the WWW

1. The History of the World Wide Web-

The internet started out as an information resource for the government

so that they could talk to each other. They called it “The Industrucable

Network” because it was so many computers linked to gether that if one server

went down, no-one would know. This report will mainly focus on the history of

the World Wide Web (WWW) because it is the fastest growing resource on the

internet. The internet consists of diferent protocals such as WWW, Gopher (Like

the WWW but text based), FTP (File Transfer Protocal), and Telnet (Allows you

to connect to different BBS’s). There are many more smaller one’s but they are

inumerable. A BBS is an abreviation for Bullitin Board Service. A BBS is a

computer that you can ether dial into or access from the Internet. BBS’s are

normally text based.

2. The Creator of the WWW-

A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim is now with the Laboratory

for Computer Science ( LCS)at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT).

He directs the W3 Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations with

the mission to realize the full potential of the Web.

With a background of system design in real-time communications and text

processing software development, in 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an

internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing. while

working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He spent two years

with Plessey elecommunications Ltd a major UK Telecom equipment manufacturer,

working on distributed transaction systems, message relays, and bar code

technology.

In 1978 Tim left Plessey to join D.G Nash Ltd, where he wrote among

other things typesetting software for intelligent printers, a multitasking

operating system, and a generic macro expander.

A year and a half spent as an independent consultant included a six

month stint as consultant software engineer at CERN, the European Particle

Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. Whilst there, he wrote for his own

private use his first program for storing information including using random

associations. Named “Enquire”, and never published, this program formed the

conceptual basis for the future development of the World Wide Web. I could go on

and on forever telling you about this person, but my report is not about him.

From 1981 until 1984, Tim was a founding Director of Image Computer

Systems Ltd, with technical design responsibility. In 1984, he took up a

fellowship at CERN, to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data

acquisition and system control.

In 1989, he proposed a global hypertext project, to be known as the

World Wide Web. Based on the earlier “Enquire” work, it was designed to allow

people to work together by combining their knowledge in a web of hypertext

documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server and the first client, a

wysiwyg hypertext browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. This

work was started in October 1990, and the program “WorldWideWeb” first made

available within CERN in December, and on the Internet at large in the summer of

1991.

Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the design of the Web,

coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His initial specifications

of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles as the Web

technology spread.

In 1994, Tim joined the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS)at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). as Director of the W3 Consortium

which coordinates W3 development worldwide, with teams at MIT and at INRIA in

France. The consortium takes as it goal to realize the full potential of the web,

ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations

of its usage.

In 1995, Tim Berners-Lee received the Kilby Foundation’s “Young

Innovator of the Year” Award for his invention of the World Wide Web, and was

corecipient of the ACM Software Systems Award. He has been named as the

recipient of the 1996 ACM Kobayashi award, and corecipient of the 1996 Computers

and Communication (C&C) award.

He has honorary degrees from the Parsons School of Design, New York

(D.F.A., 1996) and Southampton University (D.Sc., 1996), and is a Distinguished

Fellow of the British Computer Society. This has just been about Tim, but here

is the real hsitory of the WWW.

3. History of the WWW dates -

“Information Management: A Proposal” written by Tim BL and circulated

for comments at CERN (TBL). Paper “HyperText and CERN” produced as background

(text or WriteNow format). Project proposal reformulated with encouragement from

CN and ECP divisional management. Robert Cailliau (ECP) is co-author. The name

World-Wide Web was decided because the name tells you what the reasorce does.

HyperText is the language that users who want homepages on the internet use to

write them. (See a sample of this on last page). In November of 1990 Initial

WorldWideWeb program developed on the NeXT (TBL) . This was a wysiwyg

browser/editor with direct inline creation of links. This made the WWW easier to

use and navigate without having to type long numbers. Technical Student Nicola

Pellow (CN) joins and starts work on the line-mode browser. Bernd Pollermann

(CN) helps get interface to CERNVM “FIND” index running. TBL gives a colloquium

on hypertext in general. When this happend the WWW really started sprouting

because this new browsers made the WWW easier to navigate.

4. History of the World Wide Web dates 1991-1993

In 1991 a line mode browser (www) released to limited audience on “priam”

vax, rs6000, sun4. On the 17th of May a general release of WWW software was made

avalible on Cern servers. This allowed people to start ther own internet

providing such as America Online and South Carolina SuperNet. On the 12th of

June a siminar was held for the WWW that allowed people to come in and see this

new software in progres. I would like to skip ahead to present day because more

intersting things are happening now.

5. Present Day World Wide Web and Internet reasorces-

The World Wide web today is the most popular reasource on the internet.

Facts show that the internet has an average 45 million users on a day with one

more joining every eight seconds. The internet transmits at a maximum speed of

100mb per second. Present day internet is fast and relyable, it is also very

popular. The internet started out as just a few computers linked together, and

now look what we have. The internet will live on forever, and so will the WWW. I

belive that the WWW will be replaced by something in the next 10 years.