The World Wide Web (www) is a global information medium that runs over the Internet. It is so widespread that many believe that it is synonymous with the Internet. What is the origin of the World Wide Web commonly referred to as the Web? This was created to be a global information system connecting different technologies of data networks, computers, and hypertext. It was the simplest way of merging the work of scientists working in different places.
The impact of the Web has been felt across the sectors. In gambling, we have sites such as vulkanvegas.com, which work solely on the Internet and have been able to offer even the most complex gambling services to clients. The Internet has simplified the way we do things, and it all began at a particular point.
The Web was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist who was working for CERN. The idea behind it was meant to assist CERN scientists to share information simply. The company consisted of thousands of experts who were working in different laboratories and universities across the globe. The Web was created to meet the need for an automated information-sharing platform for them.
Tim started to work on this concept in 1989. He wrote the first proposal in March of that year and a second one about a year later. He collaborated with Robert Cailliau, a Belgian systems engineer, and made a formal management proposal in November 1990. The developer continued to make tremendous progress on the project. By the end of that year, he had developed the Web server and browser, which were used for the demonstration of the concept at CERN.
The server code was created on a NeXT computer. However, there was a challenge. Since it was a server, it was not supposed to be switched off. Hence, they had to place a sticker to prevent anyone from doing so. The project was successful and showed early signs of going to the top. It enabled the CERN employees to easily access vital info and to use the Search function that relied on keywords. This laid the foundation for the development of browsers as we know them today.
Further Development
The Web, as had been created, had its shortcomings that limited its use. It was okay for CERN and its employees, but could it go beyond? One of its biggest problems was that it was built on a NeXT computer platform, which was only accessible to a few people. Nicola Pellow, a student on attachment at CERN, wrote on its development on a ‘line-mode’ browser that was compatible with multiple systems.
By early 1991, the Web was being used widely by CERN scientists, and later the same year, it started spreading around the world. The first server of this technology in the United States was launched in December 2021 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Tim and the CERN team opened the door for other developers to come in and develop the system further. As a result, more browsers came into existence. The main ones include:
- Mosaic Browser by National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
- Viola by Pei Wei
- MIDAS by Tony Johnson
- Erwise by Helsinki University of Technology
The newer versions were friendlier to use. The two earlier versions, the ‘line-mode’ browser and the NeXT had their pros and cons. The former was simple to install and compatible with different platforms but user-unfriendly and not as capable, while the latter was sophisticated and powerful but with incompatibility issues.
The Mosaic browser was initially developed for the X Window System, but soon its PC and Macintosh versions were released. These browsers accelerated the spread of the Web. The European Commission, in conjunction with CERN and other partners, launched a project called WISE. In 1993, CERN made it free software, which further led to more web servers.
Open Standards
The World Wide Web became a global phenomenon that attracted many enthusiasts. It accounted for a significant portion of internet traffic and more development continued. In 1994, the first International World Wide Web conference was held at CERN’s headquarters in May. It attracted over 300 delegates. Later the same year, NCSA and the International WWW Conference Committee convened a second conference in the US, which attracted over 1000 people.
The number of users and servers kept growing, which led to other developmental concerns touching on pertinent issues like security. It was agreed that the Web would be an open standard untied to any proprietary system. CERN suggested that an international consortium be formed in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The brain behind the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee joined MIT and formed the International World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). CERN decided to opt out of doing further work on this, and French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Controls (INRIA) replaced it in the consortium. It was later replaced by European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Currently, there are over 400 member organizations in the W3C that continue to advance the development of the technology.
This is a brief history of the World Wide Web, which many prefer to simply call the Web. It has undergone significant work from the time it was first launched by Tim Berners-Lee to it its current state. The consortium is now in control, and more members keep showing interest in it. That’s the journey the Web has gone through to date.
