The Web 20 Years Ago
by Frank Jovine on 01/18/2009 in History, Internet
It wasn’t Al Gore who invented the internet, in fact he didn’t know what the internet was until around 1992.
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.
What did the first web page look like? It really doesn’t look like much other than some content with hyperlinks. See below.
Click here to see the actual page.
Here are other popular pages from their earliest days:
Yahoo (10/1996) – http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/
Microsoft (10/1996) – http://web.archive.org/web/19961020014044/http://www.microsoft.com/
AOL (12/1996) – http://web.archive.org/web/19961220154856/http://www.aol.com/
The internet has come along way in just 20 years, and I am sure we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Fool
Jan 19th, 2009
It’s funny how many people still think Al invented the internet, I sometimes say in in jest and am surprised that people believe it. I can remember linking the comments on the BBS system to Fidonet to get a “global” audience, LOL. Had 3 phone lines and 3 US Robotic Modems on the “Sysop Deal”, still cost me an arm and half a leg. But I digress………
Frank J
Jan 19th, 2009
True Fool! People still think he invented the internet, and they may even think he owns Google
Deborah
Jan 22nd, 2009
Everyone know Al Gore invented the Internet.
He also invented global warming! Such a busy fella…
Frank J
Jan 22nd, 2009
You’re funny Deborah, but I think he also invented the automobile.
Navin
Jan 22nd, 2009
I learned Tim Berners Lee Invented Internet.
Techjaws, I think that’s not what first page on Internet looked like. Back then, I was able to use the dos-based internet browser and it completely looked different than what you’ve showed here.
First Internet was all about sharing files on network and so far, they didn’t have set up this DNS technology, some of the sites, were on numbers(IP) and I used to keep their numbers on my notebook to surf their pages.
BBS were big things on those days.
I still remember, pages on internet were some hundred thousands. Today, it’s billions of billions. But, one thing I’m sure, that’s not the first web page on Internet for sure.
Brad K
Jan 22nd, 2009
BBS were not really the Internet, you dialed into a specific server to get your BBS listing. I even remember one of the old BBS numbers. That was with my Atari 800 and my 300 baud modem, $299 back then.
If you want to go way back the Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the renamed Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah). The contract was carried out by BBN of Cambridge, MA under Bob Kahn and went online in December 1969. By June 1970, MIT, Harvard, BBN, and Systems Development Corp (SDC) in Santa Monica, Cal. were added. By January 1971, Stanford, MIT’s Lincoln Labs, Carnegie-Mellon, and Case-Western Reserve U were added. In months to come, NASA/Ames, Mitre, Burroughs, RAND, and the U of Illinois plugged in. After that, there were far too many to keep listing here.
But Frank is right the Internet as we know it started with the HTML standards.
Thanks,
Brad
Navin
Jan 24th, 2009
Thank you for all those words and being specific.
I agree that the internet as we know started with the HTML standards but HTML little late. Before that too, there were blooming networks all across. My point is it would be very narrow minded to think Internet started just as the HTML,HTML just gave us the way to jump from one source of information to another, and once again, I stand firm on my words that the image shown above is definitely not the first look of the internet when I know that How Internet actually started..
sorry to bother you guys
Frank J
Jan 24th, 2009
Thank you for commenting! The internet has come a long way.
Navin
Jan 24th, 2009
true, and now, we are seeing all technologies converging at one point, i.e Internet.. whew…
Frank J
Jan 24th, 2009
I wish I was 18 and lived for 80 years to see where tech has gone.
Navin
Jan 26th, 2009
Technology is extremely dynamic and we are seeing it’s extensive growth just within a century. I’m assuming, we are gonna see lots of thing in next 50 years. Flying cars are on test phase, teleportation might take few hundred years, intergalactic travel might take another few hundreds but I think we are just seeing so much than we should.
I”m really fascinated to learn these things.
(Frank, I wish you had a notification on your comment system)
Frank J
Jan 26th, 2009
I wonder what the next 20 years will bring, I am sure it will be amazing!