Chapter 1 - A Brief History of the Web

Abstract

This chapter provides a historical perspective on the emergence of the Web since its inception in 1993 and examines the technological advances that have paved the way for the ubiquitous spread of the Web experienced in recent years. In 1993 when the World Wide Web, the WWW, or the Web arrived, it quickly became known that there was a new service around on the Internet. Using this new service, one could request a file written in a language called HTML (the Hypertext Markup Language). With a program called a browser installed on his or her local machine, that HTML file could be rendered or displayed when it arrived. Earliest browsers included Mosaic, developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Mosaic already had basic browser functionality and features that we have gotten used to, and it worked in a way we are still using browsers today: the client/server principle applied to the Internet. The basics that led to launching the Web as a service sitting atop the Internet were two quickly emerging standards: HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language, and HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Following various versions of Mosaic, a number of other browsers were launched, in particular Netscape in October 1994 and Microsoft Internet Explorer in August 1995. A number of events in recent history have led to a changed world. The world as of today has become a flat one in which people from opposite ends of the planet can interact, play, do business with each other, and collaborate, and of that without knowing each other or having met, and where companies can pursue their business in any part of the world depending on what suits their goals.