How-To Geek
This Day in Geek History: The Web Was Invented
It was exactly 20 years ago today that Tim Berners-Lee published the formal proposal to create the “WorldWideWeb”, probably for the sole purpose of one day allowing people to put moronic captions on pictures of cats.
Image from Wikipedia
The First Browser & Web Server
The first web server was a NeXT Computer, created by Steve Jobs’ company and running a Unix-based operating system named NeXTSTEP—it didn’t have a hard drive by default, came with a 1120×832 grayscale display, and it only cost $6500.
This same computer was also used to create the first web browser, appropriately titled WorldWideWeb and later renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion. It took him only two months to put together the first working version—after some more development, it was capable of displaying basic style sheets, downloading files, browsing newsgroups, and even spellchecking. Somebody should mention that last one to the Internet Explorer team…
Screenshot from Wikipedia, click on the image for the full-size version.
It wasn’t until August 6, 1991, that Tim Berners-Lee actually announced that the web was publicly available, on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, but it was 20 years ago today that the web was invented.
World Wide Web [Wikipedia]
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Comments (5)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 11/12/10
I find CERN so mysterious… They’re always doing cool stuff :D
20 years？ 30 years！
Congratulations Al Gore!
@fool – world wide web, not the internet itself = 20 years.
I believe the internet recently celebrated its FORTIETH birthday, anyhow (switching-on of TCP/IP using bits of ARPANET & all that). 30 years is closer to the modern implementation of email and usenet IIRC.