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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.

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