History of the Web
from 1945 to 1995
(timeline from the W3C
website)
1945
Vannevar Bush writes an article in Atlantic Monthly about a photo-electrical-mechanical
device called a Memex, for memory extension, which could make and
follow links between documents on microfiche
1960s
Doug Engelbart prototypes an "oNLine System" (NLS) which does hypertext browsing
editing, email, and so on. He invents the mouse for this purpose.
See the Bootstrap Institute library.
Ted Nelson coins the word Hypertext in A File Structure for
the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate. 20th National
Conference, New York, Association for Computing Machinery, 1965.
Andy van Dam and others build the Hypertext Editing System and FRESS in
1967.
1980
While consulting for CERN June-December of 1980, Tim Berners-Lee writes a notebook
program, "Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything", which allows links to
be made betwen arbitrary nodes. Each node had a title, a type, and
a list of bidirectional typed links. "ENQUIRE" ran on Norsk Data
machines under SINTRAN-III.
1989
- March
- "Information Management: A Proposal" written by Tim BL and circulated
for comments at CERN (TBL). Paper "HyperText and CERN" produced
as background (.
1990
- May
- Same proposal recirculated
- September
- Mike Sendall, Tim's boss, Oks the purchase of a NeXT cube, and allows
Tim to go ahead and write a global hypertext system.
- October
- Tim starts work on a hypertext GUI browser+editor using the
NeXTStep development environment. He makes up "WorldWideWeb" as
a name for the program. "World Wide Web" as a name for the project
(over Information Mesh, Mine of Information, and Information Mine).
- Project original proposal reformulated with encouragement from
CN and ECP divisional management. Robert Cailliau (ECP) joins
and is co-author of new version.
- November
- Initial WorldWideWeb program development continues on the NeXT
(TBL) . This was a "what you see is what you get" (wysiwyg) browser/editor
with direct inline creation of links. The first web server was
nxoc01.cern.ch, later called info.cern.ch, and the first
web page http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
Unfortunately CERN no longer supports the historical site. Note
from this era too, the least recently modified web page we know
of, last changed Tue, 13 Nov 1990 15:17:00 GMT (though the URI
changed.)
- November
- 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.
- Christmas
- Line mode browser and WorldWideWeb browser/editor demonstrable. Acces
is possible to hypertext files, CERNVM "FIND", and Internet news
articles.
1991
- February
- workplan for the purposes of ECP division.
- 26 February 1991
- Presentation of the project to the ECP/PT group.
- March
- Line mode browser (www) released to limited audience on "priam" vax,
rs6000, sun4.
- May
- Workplan produced for CN/AS group
- 17 May
- Presentation to "C5" Committee. General release of WWW on central CERN
machines.
- 12 June
- CERN Computer Seminar on WWW.
- August
- Files available on the net by FTP, posted on
alt.hypertext (6, 16, 19th Aug), comp.sys.next (20th), comp.text.sgml
and comp.mail.multi-media (22nd). Jean-Francois Groff joins the
project.
- October
- VMS/HELP and WAIS gateways installed. Mailing lists www-interest (now
www-announce) and www-talk@info.cern.ch (see archive) started.
One year status report. Anonymous telnet service started.
- December
- Presented poster and demonstration at Hypertext'91 in San Antonio,
Texas (US). W3 browser installed on VM/CMS. CERN computer newsletter
announces W3 to the HEP world.
Dec 12: Paul Kunz installs first Web server outside of Europe, at
SLAC.
1992
- 15 January
- Line mode browser release 1.1 available by anonymous FTP. Presentation
to AIHEP'92 at La Londe (FR).
- 12 February
- Line mode v 1.2 annouced on alt.hypertext, comp.infosystems,
comp.mail.multi-media, cern.sting, comp.archives.admin, and mailing
lists.
- April
- 29th April: Release of Finnish "Erwise" GUI client for X mentioned
in review by TimBL.
- May
- Pei Wei's "Viola" GUI browser for X test version dated May 15.
(See review by TimBL)
At CERN, Presentation and demo at JENC3, Innsbruck (AT). Technical
Student Carl Barker (ECP) joins the project.
- June
- Presentation and demo at HEPVM (Lyon). People at FNAL (Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory (US)), NIKHEF (Nationaal Instituut voor Kern- en
Hoge Energie Fysika, (NL)), DESY (Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron,
Hamburg, (DE)) join with WWW servers.
- July
- Distribution of WWW through CernLib, including Viola. WWW library
code ported to DECnet. Report to the Advisory Board on Computing.
- August
- Introduction of CVS for code management at CERN.
- September
- Plenary session demonstration to the HEP community at CHEP'92 in
Annecy (FR).
- November
- Jump back in time to a snapshot of the WWW Project Page as of
3 Nov 1992 and the WWW project web of the time, including the
list of all 26 resoanably reliable servers, NCSA's having just
been added, but no sign of Mosaic.
1993
- January
- By now, Midas (Tony Johnson, SLAC), Erwise (HUT), and Viola (Pei Wei,
O'Reilly Associates) browsers are available for X; CERN Mac browser
(ECP) released as alpha. Around 50 known HTTP servers.
- February
- NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X".
Computing seminar at CERN
- March
- WWW (Port 80 HTTP) traffic measures 0.1% of NSF backbone traffic. WWW
presented at Online Publishing 93, Pittsburgh.
- April
- April 30: Date on the declaration by CERN's directors that WWW
technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable
to CERN. A milestone document.
- July
- Ari Luotonen (ECP) joins the project at CERN. He implements access
authorisation, proceeds to re-write the CERN httpd server.
- August
- O'Reilly hosts first WWW Wizards Workshop in Cambridge Mass (US).
- September
- WWW (Port 80 http) traffic measures 1% of NSF backbone traffic. NCSA
releases working versions of Mosaic browser for all common platforms:
X, PC/Windows and Macintosh.
- October
- Over 200 known HTTP servers. The European Commission, the Fraunhofer
Gesellschaft and CERN start the first Web-based project of the European
Union (DG XIII): WISE, using the Web for dissemination of technological
information to Europe's less favoured regions.
- December
- WWW receives IMA award. John Markov writes a page and a half on WWW
and Mosaic in "The New York Times" (US) business section. "The
Guardian" (UK) publishes a page on WWW, "The Economist" (UK) analyses
the Internet and WWW.
Robert Cailliau gets go-ahead from CERN management to organise the
First International WWW Conference at CERN.
1994
- January
- O'Reilly, Spry, etc announce "Internet in a box" product to bring the
Web into homes.
- March
- Marc Andreessen and colleagues leave NCSA to form "Mosaic
Communications Corp" (later Netscape).
- May 25-27
- First International WWW Conference, CERN, Geneva. Heavily oversubscribed
(800 apply, 400 allowed in): the "Woodstock of the Web". VRML
is conceived here. TBL's closing keynote hints at upcoming organization.
(Some of Tim's slides on Semantic Web)
- June
- M. Bangemann report on European Commission Information Superhighway plan.
Over 1500 registered servers.
- July
- MIT/CERN agreement to start W3 Organisation is announced by
Bangemann in Boston. Press release. AP wire. Reports in Wall Street
Journal, Boston Globe etc.
- August
- Founding of the IW3C2: the International WWW Conference Committee, in
Boston, by NCSA and CERN.
- September
- The European Commission and CERN propose the WebCore project for
development of the Web core technology in Europe.
- 1 October
- World Wide Web Consortium founded.
- October
- Second International WWW Conference: "Mosaic and the Web", Chicago. Also
heavily oversubscribed: 2000 apply, 1300 allowed in.
- 14 December
- First W3 Consortium Meeting
at M.I.T. in Cambridge (USA).
- 15 December
- First meeting with European Industry and the European Consortium branch,
at the European Commission, Brussels.
- 16 December
- CERN Council approves unanimously the construction of the LHC
(Large Hadron Collider) accelerator, CERN's next machine and competitor
to the US' already defunct SSC (Superconducting Supercollider).
Stringent budget conditions are however imposed. CERN thus decides
not to continue WWW development, and in concertation with the
European Commission and INRIA (the Institut National pour la Recherche
en Informatique et Automatique, FR) transfers the WebCore project
to INRIA.
1995
- February
- the Web is the main reason for the theme of the G7 meeting hosted by
the European Commission in the European Parliament buildings in
Brussels (BE).
- March
- CERN holds a two-day seminar for the European Media (press, radio, TV),
attended by 250 reporters, to show WWW. It is demonstrated on
60 machines, with 30 pupils from the local International High
School helping the reporters "surf the Web".
- April
- Third International WWW Conference: "Tools and Applications",
hosted by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, in Darmstadt (DE)
- June
- Founding of the Web Society in Graz (AT), by the Technical University
of Graz (home of Hyper-G), CERN, the University of Minnesota (home
of Gopher) and INRIA.