16/03/2010 Facts about the Web's Creation: Scien… Features - March 12, 2009 Facts about the Web's Creation Everything you ever wanted to know about the Web's first days By Mark Fischetti First program by Tim Berners-Lee that attempted to link bits of data: —Enquire, 1980, for Berners-Lee's personal use as a software consultant at CERN; he later left and the code was lost Second program: —Tangle, 1984, when Berners-Lee returned, to help him keep track of CERN's many scientists, projects and incompatible computers Early names for the Web: —Information Mesh, Mine of Information, The Information Mine (But Berners-Lee thought the acronym, TIM, was too egocentric!) Computer the Web code was written on, and Web browser was designed on: —NeXT, by NeXT, Inc., founded by Steve Jobs, who had started Apple Computer earlier and returned to it later Programming language used: —C Time taken to write the code: —Three months First Web browser: —Called WorldWideWeb; it could edit Web pages as well as access them; it worked only on the NeXT platform First se rve r a ddre ss: —nxoc01.cern.ch (NeXT, Online Controls, 1), with an alias of info.cern.ch First full demonstration: —Christmas Day 1990, operating over the Internet from Berners-Lee's NeXT machine to the NeXT computer of his office partner and now Web co-developer, Robert Cailliau Content of first Web page: —The CERN phone directory First U.S. Web server: —April 1991, hosted by the Stanford University Linear Accelerator lab Hits (pages viewed) on the info.cern.ch server: August 1991: 100 a day August 1992: 1,000 a day August 1993: 10,000 a day First Web browsers: —WorldWideWeb, December 1990, for the NeXT platform, by Berners-Lee scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id… 1/2 16/03/2010 Facts about the Web's Creation: Scien… —Erwise, April 1992, for Unix, by students at Helsinki University of Technology —Viola, May 1992, for Unix, by student Pei Wei at the University of California, Berkeley —Samba, summer 1992, for Macintosh, by Robert Cailliau at CERN, finished by intern Nicola Pellow Notable early servers that showed the Web's complex capabilities: —1992, virtual museum of objects in the Vatican, by programmer Frans van Hoesel —1992, virtual geographic maps, with pan and zoom, by Steve Putz at Xerox PARC scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id… 2/2.