Happy Birthday World Wide Web!
Next year, if you're good, you might get a car
Monday, August 7, 2006 by Zoomba | Discussion: WinCustomize News
Tim Berners-Lee, then a researcher at CERN, posted to the alt.hypertext newsgroup saying that his fledgling hypertext project was ready for public review. While the original goal of the web was somewhat different than what it grew into (think back to the old days where it was mostly just links around to academic resources). The original web concept more closely resembles todays' search engines where you are provided pointers to existing data. It was designed as an easy way to index and make available existing non-published information much like old systems such as Gopher did. However, instead of reformatting the information so it could fit into Gopher, you would just link your text, zip, image, whatever file from an webpage (still using a subset of SGML tags, before HTML was standardized) and post that index page to a web server. Suddenly, anyone who can get to your web server can access any file you've linked, all with minimal effort on your part.
You can still read the original announcement posted to the alt.hypertext group thanks to the wonders of Google Groups.
It's hard to believe that just 15 years ago, none of this existed, that the entire concept of what the Internet was, was limited to the academic and government spheres. It's also interesting to see how the entire WWW idea morphed over time as the public took ownership of it. What was once meant to be a method for indexing and making available existing data in various formats, it has become the preferred method to store and publish information in the first place. How often do you download a word doc from a weblog? Chances are most of the content is in the HTML itself.
Reply #4 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 3:32 AM
Happy Birthday HTTP://WWW!!!Reply #5 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:59 PM
Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet and he is a British citizen LOL Al Gore LOL
Reply #6 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 1:05 PM
Reply #7 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 3:24 PM
- in the states!! However, I didn't know T.B.Lee was from the U.K...ThX for the info!! 
Reply #8 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 5:40 PM
Reply #9 Tuesday, August 8, 2006 6:47 PM
Ever heard of ARPAnet? Even Mr. Lee couldn't have done anything without it.
Also, DARPA / ARPA would not have existed if it wasn't for Sputnik beating America in the Space Race.
Seriously, crediting the guy who invented html and htm as being the sole inventor of the Internet is silly. Its like stating ARPAnet was a pipe dream.
The Net has existed since 1969. (ARPAnet's first implementation was at UCLA on October 29, 1969)
Its what makes the long running gag of Al Gore so damn funny.
So, if you wanted to seriously thank people for the WWW, its Mr. Lee along with the people involved with both ARPA and DARPA. After all it took both America and Britain to create the network as it is today.
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Reply #1 Monday, August 7, 2006 12:52 PM
Happy Birthday WWW!