• Dec 2013 TT comment

When did the Internet and the Web begin

Today, it's acceptable to use the terms "Internet" and "Web" interchangeably, although technically, they are dramatically different.

Simple explanation:

• Internet - is the network
• Web (HTTP) - is a "program" that runs over the network

Many other applications or protocols execute over the network (Internet), such as chat (IRC), e-mail (SMTP), and file transfer (FTP). A client app talks to a server app, using a defined set of commands or protocol.

It's relatively easy to create a custom client app and server app that talk to each other with a custom protocol.

Aug 23, 2013 - Happy Anniversary W.W.W.

Today marks the 22nd birthday of the world wide web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9, the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (named WorldWideWeb, which was also a Web editor), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server (http://info.cern.ch), and the first Web pages that described the project itself.

On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet, although new users only access it after August 23. For this reason this is considered the internaut's day.

"The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow all links to be made to any information anywhere. [...] The W.W.W. project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!" - from Tim Berners-Lee's first message

Aug 31, 2009 - Internet's 40th 'Birthday' Marked

In fall 1969, computers sending data between two California universities set the stage for the Internet, which became a household word in the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

http://howoldistheinter.net

I would say the Internet is my favorite technology. The Web is my favorite network protocol

Dec 2013 TT comment

The "program" that led to the masses being interested in the Internet was the World Wide Web, which lists its birthday as August 23, 1991. But, of course, even that was not enough, since access was through text-only means. So some chaps at the NCSA developed the Mosaic graphical Web browser around 1993. Eventually, they left Illinois for Silicon Valley and started Netscape. In 1995, when Microsoft released Windows 95, a lot of homeowners bought PCs to access the Internet. And so on.

The 1990-1991 creation of the Web (HTTP and HTML) by Tim Berners-Lee traces its roots to the hypertext systems developed in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Many of these systems were not network-enabled applications. They were stand-alone programs. But the concepts of the early systems, such as Project Xanadu built in the 1960s, influenced the creation of later versions, such as Apple's HyperCard, created in the late 1980s.

An interesting book to read, if you can find it, was published in 1990, titled HyperText and HyperMedia by Jakob Nielsen.

But the inspiration for some of this may go back even further.

In 1945, The Atlantic Monthly published an article titled As We May Think, written by Vannevar Bush. He named his proposed system memex, which sort of meant "memory extender."

Excerpts from Vannevar's 1945 article:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section ~_ the memex film, dry photography being employed.

The Encyclopedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van.

From the Wikipedia page about Vannevar's memex idea:

The concept of the memex influenced the development of early hypertext systems (eventually leading to the creation of the World Wide Web) and personal knowledge base software.

#history - #web - #internet - #technology - #blog_jr