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March 12, 2009

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Facts about the Web's Creation

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Web's first days

By Mark Fischetti

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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 server address:
—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
—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

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Mark Fischetti was a senior editor at Scientific American for nearly 20 years and covered sustainability issues, including climate, environment, energy, and more. He assigned and edited feature articles and news by journalists and scientists and also wrote in those formats. He was founding managing editor of two spin-off magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 article “Drowning New Orleans” predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. Fischetti has written as a freelancer for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and many other outlets. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti has a physics degree and has twice served as Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union’s Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism. He has appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many radio stations.

More by Mark Fischetti

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