History+of+the+Web

__ **History of the Web** __
The first man to envision a device that could handle and transfer massive amounts of information was  Vannevar Bush, an important member of our Defense Research Committee during World War II. 1 He realized that the amount of data we generate as a whole, everyday was enormous and that the amount and accuracy of information would become a critical aspect in all future conflicts. In 1945, he wrote an article about a theoretical engine he called "Memex," that would be photographic, electrical, and mechanical in nature. Its purpose was for memory expansion, or basically a mechanized library, that could create and navigate through links between files on microfiche. Although his work was more about the concept of data storage and management rather than networking, it allowed future scientists to piggyback on that and start building the real thing. A man named J.C.R. Licklider became his successor and he also saw the potential of a mechanical library and envisioned a large network of devices that shared information that would drastically decrease the amount of time it normally took to sort through information manually. He called this the "Intergalactic Network." 2

1. [Jonathan Strickland, "Who Invented The Internet," HowStuffWorks.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

2. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web," Wc3.com, available from  [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

 However, all of this remained conceptual until 1957 when the man-made satellite, "Sputnik" was launched from the Soviet Union. This was during the Cold War, so the United States and the Soviet Union were enemies. It was assumed that if the Soviet Union could get a satellite into space, they could launch a missile into the United States. This assumption officially began the planning of the first communication-information network. The following year, president Eisenhower began project ARPANET, which stands for "Advanced Research Projects Agency." The network itself was designed to be impervious from direct attacks by creating a <range type="comment" id="261264">web of connections across the country that would simply re-route around any damaged parts thus maintaining the flow of information and <range type="comment" id="81052">allowing our military to respond quickly to whoever was attacking. 3

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">3. [Jessika Toothman, "What's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web," HowStuffWorks.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> Peer-to-peer networks soon emerged in the 1960s that used "packet-switching" technology in which data is broken up into small chunks (packets), compressed and often encrypted, then sent to its destination according to the packet's header<range type="comment" id="541988"> and then re-assembled again. Any losses in this transfer process were simply re-sent without any drop in connectivity since the receiving computer would send back a confirmation that each piece was received properly. Originally, ARPANET used its own Network Control Protocol (NCP) but this was soon replaced with another known as "TCP/IP" that was more efficient in transferring packets throughout the network. It was around this time that a man named Doug Engelbart created the first <range type="comment" id="203772">text-based browser program called "oNLine System, or NLS which <range type="comment" id="18142">utilized hypertext editing and email that operated via the TCP/IP protocol. Soon this network spread in popularity from the government onto college and university campuses. 4 Professors and students now could collaborate and share information much faster. At this point in the United States, all of the main Universities were interlinked within ARPANET, which proved to be a very effective way to share information. By 1973, t<range type="comment" id="805003">he U.S. established the first intercontinental connection with the University College of London. 4

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> 4. [Ross Shannon, "The History of the Net," yourhtmlsource.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">5. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web," Wc3.com, available from <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> After this,<range type="comment" id="370251"> "text-based" online bulletin boards (BBS) became the standard way to access information via "line mode" browsers. This led to a system called USENET that operated independently from the main ARPANET servers. USENET acted as large discussion forums that lifted normal restrictions on things <range type="comment" id="234301">such as taboo subjects under the right of freedom of speech<range type="comment" id="84309">. 8 Many others services followed such as <range type="comment" id="361644">Bitnet and Fidonet which had virtually the same functions, all of which eventually merged. Soon after this period came new protocols such as NNTP which stands for Net News Transfer Protocol<range type="comment" id="597283">, which was followed by the file transfer protocol (FTP) which enabled the download and transfer of actual computer files<range type="comment" id="271431">, and then Internet Relay Chat (IRC), which was also a text-based system but focused on realtime user discussion rather than a message centre. 7


 * [[image:e-life3862-a/09-11_irc.jpg caption="Click to open source in new window" link="@http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/"]] ||

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> 6. [Jessika Toothman, "What's the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web," HowStuffWorks.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">7. [Dan Connolly, "A Little History of the World Wide Web," Wc3.com, available from <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> In 1990, a man named Tim Berners-Lee invented the "hyper text transfer protocol<range type="comment" id="594278">" ( HTTP). This quickly became the basic foundation for what would become the W<range type="comment" id="392622">orld Wide Web. A few short years later,<range type="comment" id="14421"> the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) developed the first graphical web browser called "Mosaic" and ported it to both <range type="comment" id="768683">Windows-based and Macintosh-based machines. 8 This dramatically increased web page usage. The first large Internet Service <range type="comment" id="429422">Provider (ISP) companies sprang up with the most prominent being America Online and Compuserve. These services began providing Internet access to everyone for a fee. At this point,<range type="comment" id="227967"> the Internet began growing exponentially, and websites coded in the basic html language began springing up. Even at this early stage of growth,<range type="comment" id="526063"> viruses and worms had already appeared and were hijacking computers that were connected to the internet<range type="comment" id="89878">. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 9px; vertical-align: super;">8 <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> 8. [Ross Shannon, "The History of the Net," yourhtmlsource.com, available from [], accessed 6 November 2011.]

===<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 1.1em;"> **__Creation of the world wide web__** ===

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 1em;"> Early In the 1990's Gopher (an information retrieval system) was used to deliver menus of links to files, computer resources, and other menus. 9 <range type="comment" id="665807"> These menus could cross the boundaries of the current computer and use the Internet to retrieve menus from other systems. Gopher was created at the University of Minnesota. 9 Originally there was going to be a licensing fee required to use G<range type="comment" id="359266">opher. Because of this, many <range type="comment" id="750990">organizations tried to look at alternatives to G<range type="comment" id="777700">opher. 10 <range type="comment" id="553671">In Switzerland, the European Council For Nuclear Research (CERN) provided the alternative. Tim Berners-Lee had been working on an information management system, in which text could contain links and references to other works, allowing the reader to quickly jump from document to document. He had created a server for publishing this style of document (called hypertext) as well as a program for reading them, which he had called World Wide Web. 9 ======

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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;"><range type="comment" id="514368"><range type="comment" id="734355">However, it took<range type="comment" id="55687"> the development of new and better browsers to cause an explosion in popularity and eventually replace Gopher. The number of available web browsers increased, many created by research projects at universities and corporations, such as Telenor (a Norwegian communications company,) which created the first version of the Opera browser in 1994. 9 ======

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">9. ["The history of the Web," wikipedia.com, available from __http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_history_of_the_Web__ ,accessed 5 December 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">10. ["History of the Gopher Protocol," codeghost.com, available from [] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">, accessed 5 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">__The "browser wars"__ **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> There was much commercial interest in the Internet because of the popularity of the web. Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded Mosaic Communications, which later they renamed to Netscape Communications Corporation. Here they worked on what would be later named Netscape Navigator. In December 1994 version 1.0 was released. 11 Spyglass Inc. licensed their Mosaic technology to Microsoft to form Internet Explorer. Version 1.0 was released in August 1995. Three months later Internet explorer 2.0 was released for free, Netscape was not. 11 Internet Explorer was free to all Windows users<range type="comment" id="419729">, e ven commercial companies. Other companies soon followed and gave away their browsers for free. New versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape were released rapidly over the next few years. Rapid growth was on the rise, with Netscape and Microsoft trying to get a competitive edge with the features they supported to attract developers. This would be known as the "browser wars". Opera maintained a small but steady presence throughout this period, and tried to innovate and support web standards as well as possible. 12

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">11. ["The history of the Web," wikipedia.com, available from __http://www.w3.org/wiki/The_history_of_the_Web__ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">,accessed 5 December 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">12. ["Browser wars," wikipedia.com, available from [] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">, accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">Over time<range type="comment" id="55664"> web technologies have evolved to <range type="comment" id="872446">provide web developers with the ability to create new generations of useful and immersive web experiences. Today's web is a result of the ongoing efforts of an open web community that helps define web technologies, like HTML5, CSS3 and WebGL to ensure support for all web browsers.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 80%; vertical-align: super;">The black time-lines show major browser releases. Color bands represent browser technologies such as JavaScript, HTML, and Flash, and the bands grow as new browsers integrate the technologies. The intertwining of bands is supposed to show the interaction between different technologies. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 9px; vertical-align: super;">13
 * [[image:e-life3862-a/evo_web.jpg width="715" height="242" caption="Click to open source in new window" link="@http://evolutionofweb.appspot.com/"]] ||

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">13. ["The Evolution of the Web," evolutionofweb.appspot.com, available from [] <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">, accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;"><range type="comment" id="603438">In 1998, the browser market was dominated by Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4. A beta version of Internet Explorer 5 was released, and it implemented a new and proprietary dynamic HTML. Because of this, professional web developers had to know five different ways of writing JavaScript. As a result of this, a group of web design and developers had to seek a solution to all of these proprietary technologies being used. Their group was called the "Web Standards Project" (WaSP). They wanted Microsoft and Netscape to support them so they began calling W3C documents "<range type="comment" id="251324">standards" instead of "recommendations." 11 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">Microsoft released Internet Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition in 2000. This was very important as it was the default browser for the Mac OS at this time, it also had exceptional support for W3C recommendations as well. <range type="comment" id="426229">This came along for Opera's level of support for CSS and HTML. It helped with a movement that made web developers and designers feel comfortable designing sites using web standards for the first time. By this time Netscape had been converted to an open source project and was released as Netscape version 6 and 7 consecutively. So after an extensive beta test with Netscape 7, it was re-released with the new name "Mozilla" in 2002, which had always been Netscape's codename. Eventually this work would evolve into what is now the popular open source web browser known as Mozilla <range type="comment" id="638974">Firefox. 11

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">2004 marked the birth of Web 2.0, where the Internet began to shift towards more interactivity and a platform for <range type="comment" id="333830">connectivity, rather than static pages of information and pictures. This was also when the term "social media" was first coined by Chris Sharpley and pretty soon interactive websites like Digg and Facebook appeared that allowed its users to find and talk to their friends and create their own content and put it on display. 14 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">


 * [[image:e-life3862-a/lowndes-fig2-400px.gif caption="Click to open source in new window" link="@http://electronicportfolios.com/web2/class/index.html"]] ||

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> The first online video streaming site known as "YouTube" was launched in 2005, bringing <range type="comment" id="583593">user-created video footage to the masses. Anyone with a <range type="comment" id="557070">webcam or digital camera could upload videos for the world to see and comment on. Then in 2006 social media changed with the launch of Twitter, which gave it a more minimal feel by allowing text and images to be posted, or "tweeted," and limiting the poster to 140 characters. The world of online video was again changed remarkably with the launch of Hulu, which let you watch movies and TV shows without a subscription to a cable or satellite provider. 14

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">2007 marked the arrival of mobile Internet, or rather, mobile web that had a real purpose. Most credit the creation of the first iPhone for re-igniting the interest in mobile web design. At this point the Internet began to dramatically shift from the home to on the go, with a nearly endless plethora of mobile websites and apps available that let us do virtually anything at our fingertips wherever we are. At this point we began to slip into the era of Web 3.0. 14

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">14. [Cameron Chapman, "The History of the Internet in a Nutshell," sixrevisions.com, available from[], accessed 7 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;"> It's hard to say what new directions the Internet will take in our future with all of our technologies constantly coming and going and merging. However, with a little insight it is easy to at least see that more and more things are being integrated into the Internet. Things such as washing machines and refrigerators will become more interactive serving a more useful purpose in our daily lives. So far the Internet is mostly based on our sense of sight and sound. There is now a new technology in the works to bring synthesized smells to us from cyberspace. 15 Slowly but surely, as we progress farther and farther into the future we will see the digital world and reality slowly begin to merge together. 16

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">15. ["How Internet Oders Will Work," howstuffworks.com, available from <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">[], accessed 6 November 2011.]

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 14px;">16. ["What do you think the Internet will be like in 2050?," howstuffworks.com, available from [], accessed 7 November 2011.]

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