The folks over at CERN, the home of the World Wide Web, are celebrating today. It was 20 years ago that Tim Berners-Lee came up with the idea. From info.cern.ch:
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is where it all began in March 1989. A physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote a proposal for information management showing how information could be transferred easily over the Internet by using hypertext, the now familiar point-and-click system of navigating through information. The following year, Robert Cailliau, a systems engineer, joined in and soon became its number one advocate.
The idea was to connect hypertext with the Internet and personal computers, thereby having a single information network to help CERN physicists share all the computer-stored information at the laboratory. Hypertext would enable users to browse easily between texts on web pages using links. The first examples were developed on NeXT computers.
Berners-Lee created a browser-editor with the goal of developing a tool to make the Web a creative space to share and edit information and build a common hypertext. What should they call this new browser: The Mine of Information? The Information Mesh? When they settled on a name in May 1990, it was the WorldWideWeb.
It was later in 1990 that the Web was launched. More details about the celebrations are over at World Wide Web@20.
Happy Birthday, little Web!
Hat tip to Dan York for picking up on the story.
I think we should all have cake! I can't imagine a MORE profound and world altering innovation. The lunar landing was momentous, but the web has changed nearly everything for nearly everyone.
Interesting how they picked a date for the event. It makes sense that it coincides with Tim Berners-Lee's work at CERN; but this was running in parallel to most user's Internet experience.
Until late 1993, most people would say 'the Internet' or gopher, telnet, veronica, etc. WWW didn't hit our vocabulary until spring of '94(?). The early text-based web was still somewhat similar to Gopher, except that it broke out of the list-menu driven navigation.
The advent of the graphical browser Mosaic was the big memory for me, tipping point wise. That was also the time of dropping VGA monitors for color, and putting the 2400 baud modems in the trash can. :) It could have been all those elements combined, but moving from Lynx (text-based web) to Mosaic was the jaw-dropping moment.
For me it was long before that, when I was using Bitnet and Netnorth to talk to people about their projects around the world. The Web and the browser Mosaic just made it all easier. You are right, it was certainly in the air.
It is interesting how they are counting it, but this way I figure we have a good 5 years of celebrating (and yes, cake). And then we can start on celebrating the 25th anniversary. ;-)