History of the Internet: Part 2 – World Wide Web Early Years

Welcome to Part Two of our journey through time, learning how the Internet has evolved and remembering the effect that it has had on our lives.\n\n\n\nIn the first part, we saw the birth of the Internet in the USA. We learned some of the protocols that are fundamental to how the Internet works.\n\nBy 1989, the Internet works across countries, including Australia, Mexico, Japan, and many European countries.\n\nThis sets the stage for the biggest revolution in the history of the Internet, one with very humble beginnings and snowballing benefits: the World Wide Web.\n\nBut first there is another story to tell: the backstory of Sir Timothy Berners-Lee.\n\nTim Berners-Lee is born in 1955 as the son of two mathematicians, Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners Lee. His parents are part of the team who programmed the world’s first commercial, stored-program computer, the Manchester University “Mark 1.”\n\nHe is fortunate enough to grow up in an environment where he can learn what computers are and gain an understanding of how they work from an early age.\n\nHe realizes how computers could be much more powerful if only there was a way to program them to link otherwise unconnected information. This thought stays with him during his years at Oxford University, where he studies physics.\n\nIn 1980 he joins CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva. Initially, he is almost overwhelmed with information: there are 10,000 employees here and so many different computers and projects.\n\nTo manage all of these relationships and help himself to remember them all, in his spare time he begins an experimental project: writing a small program using Pascal.\n\nHe calls his project Enquire, a name inspired by the Victorian book, Enquire Within Upon Everything.\n\nThis book provides encyclopedic information on many diverse topics. With subjects such as etiquette, parlour games, cake recipes, laundry tips, and first aid all covered, this book broke the mould for what a book should be and was a bestseller in its day.\n\nTim reads this book as a child and feels it is “a portal to a world of information.”\n\nTim is satisfied with the results of Enquire and begins to think bigger. Much bigger! “Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked,” he muses.\n\nHe also notes that retrieving information from the computers is much more challenging than it needs to be.\n\nEach computer has its own set of information. Not only do the CERN employees need to log into many different computers, but they are also often required to learn how to use a different program for each computer they wish to retrieve information from.\n\nHe sees many developers arrive at CERN and attempt to sell documentation systems to researchers. But they receive a hostile reception, because all of the systems they are attempting to sell require the researchers to reorganise and constrain their work to fit the limitations of those systems.\n\nFrom witnessing these conversations, Tim learns that any system containing common rules that work for everyone would mean having next to no rules at all!\n\nOver the next few years, he learns more about the idea of Hypertext, which Ted Nelson presents in his book Literary Machines. He comes to believe that this idea holds the potential to change computing forever.\n\nIt is also necessary, Tim believes, that the system be completely decentralized. In 1988, he speaks to his boss, Mike Sendall, about his idea and is asked to write up a proposal.\n\n

1989

\n\nTim writes a document called “Information Management: A Proposal.” It discusses the information access problems that he has identified and proposes the idea of replacing the current system with linked information systems.\n\nTim sends it off to Mike Sendall and also Mike’s boss. While he is waiting for their feedback, he floats the ideas to several other colleagues and is met with a “lacklustre” response.\n\nThere is no official response for his proposal, but the more that Tim experiments with the Internet, the more he becomes convinced of the importance of his idea.\n\n

1990

\n\nTim decides to name the project the World Wide Web. He reformats his proposal, puts a new date of May 1990 on it, and re-submits it.\n\nLater this year, he asks Mike Sendall for investment in a NeXT computer. Mike agrees and says, “Once you get the machine, why not try programming your hypertext thing on it?”\n\nWhile starting this new project, he faces many detractors, but is buoyed by the support of one colleague: Robert Cailliau, a Belgian-born engineer with a love of elegant solutions.\n\nAccording to Tim, Robert could be “driven mad by the incompatibility of power plugs.”. Robert immediately sees the potential of this project for evolving computer systems away from the mass of conflicting protocols that are a part of everyday life.\n\nIn September, Tim and Robert travel to the European Conference of Hypertext Technology to pitch the idea and hopefully find a company they can buy a solution from.\n\nThey find that many attendees cannot fully understand what the idea is all about. Tim hears that a better design is to have a central link database; otherwise, the system will have broken links.\n\nSoon after arriving home, Tim realizes that he will need to build the Web himself and begins this in October. By December, it is working, with a new Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), a simplified version of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).\n\nHowever, it is only working on one platform: the NeXT. Nicola Pellow, a maths undergraduate from England, is hired to help out.\n\nTim adds the programming necessary to work with the file transfer protocol. Suddenly, Internet newsgroups and articles are available as web pages, making a huge amount of information on the Internet also accessible on the Web.\n\n

1991

\n\nAlthough Tim has a desire to get the Web working on IBM compatible PCs, due to limited resources he decides to stick with the NeXT system for the time being. The WorldWideWeb browser is installed onto some of his colleagues’ NeXT computers in March.\n\nBecause the project is being funded by CERN, the first database to be added to the Web is the CERN telephone book.\n\nThe first web server outside of CERN is created at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) in Palo Alto.\n\nTo combat misunderstanding of this new technology and explain why it is different, Tim describes it as being like a market economy: anybody can trade with anybody, and they don’t need to go to a market square to do it. All they need is a few rules that everyone must agree to, such as the currency used and the rules of fair trading.\n\nFor the Web to become a success, people must share data. Tim has found that the existing Internet protocols don’t make it easy enough for anyone to share data freely.\n\nHe writes the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), designing it to be quick enough to fetch a resource in about a tenth of a second. This is much faster than the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), but as huge amounts of information are already available via FTP, it is based to support this protocol as well.\n\nThe key component is the Universal Resource Identifier (URI), which tells the browser where to go to find any resource. The first few letters of the URI address specify the protocol to use, and Tim designs it to support both HTTP and FTP. Two other protocols, Gopher and WAIS, are proving much more popular than HTTP, so Tim decides to support these as well.\n\n

1992

\n\nRobert and Tim know that more developers are needed to create a better web browser, and that they aren’t available at CERN.\n\nRobert flies to Helsinki University to meet students interested in building a web browser for their combined master’s project. As their department initials are OTH, they call the browser Erwise, so that it spells “otherwise.” It is released in April.\n\nNext month, Pei-Yuan Wei at the University of California, Berkeley, releases a test version of his ViolaWWW browser to demonstrate the power of the Viola programming language. For the first time, Unix users can now access the Web.\n\nIn June, Tim meets members of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to discuss how to standardise the addressing scheme, HTTP and HTML. Tim argues for the name Universal Document Identifier, but the name is unpopular with the IETF so he compromises on URI: Uniform Resource Identifier, and a URI Working Group is formed.\n\nAlso this summer, the Sun Microsystems “Green Team” emerge from their office with a working demo: an interactive, handheld, home-entertainment device controller with an animated touchscreen user interface. This uses a new programming language that James Gosling created called Oak, named after the Oak tree outside his office window.\n\n

1993

\n\n

1994

\n\n

Microsoft Plans to Enter the Market; Mosaic Communications Founded

\n\nIn January, J. Allard still strongly feels that Microsoft doesn’t understand the importance of the Internet. He writes the memo Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet” to leaders at Microsoft.\n\nThis document provides a detailed look at the various Internet technologies available at the beginning of 1994, and their rise in popularity up until then. The World Wide Web is listed in the section “Information Discovery and Retrieval (Second Generation Tools)” along with Archie and WAIS, and shows the number of Web Servers has increased rapidly since NCSA Mosaic was released.\n\nAllard says that although the Mosaic browser is available for Windows, “the current implementation is considerably weaker than its Unix counterpart.” He recommends a three-phase approach for participating in the development of the Internet: Embrace, Extend, and Innovate. The end goal is for Windows to become “the global infostructure explorer.”\n\nIncluded in the list of recipients for this memo is Steven Sinofsky, Bill Gates’ Technical Assistant.\n\n

First International World Wide Web Conference

\n\nIn May, the first International Conference on the World Wide Web is held at CERN in Geneva and dubbed by reporters as the “Woodstock of the Web.” In the closing speech, Tim says that web developers, like scientists, need to be ethically and morally aware of their actions.\n\n

Sun Microsystems Targets the World Wide Web

\n\nThe Oak programming language has been renamed to Java to avoid a trademark infringement, and a deal with Cable TV companies has fallen through. In June, the team decides to re-target the platform for the Web. Patrick Naughton writes the WebRunner browser, named after the movie Blade Runner.\n\n

W3C

\n\nIn October, Tim Berners-Lee founds the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in collaboration with CERN. Full annual membership is available for $50,000 or the same benefits are available for $5,000 if the company has annual revenues of less than $50m.\n\nMosaic Communication Corp insists on paying the full $50,000 despite qualifying for the reduced rate because of its belief that it is a big company. They release Mosaic Netscape 0.9. It is developing a new protocol called Secure Sockets Layer and plans to include this in a future version of the browser.\n\nIn November, both Microsoft and Mosaic Communications Corp attend the Comdex trade show to promote their products. Microsoft announces the Microsoft Network (MSN).\n\nJim Clark announces their company name is changing to Netscape Communications Corporation. This is due to NCSA suing the company for naming it after their Mosaic software.\n\nIn December, the first W3C meeting is held and the need to standardise HTML is discussed. To expedite the process, the attendees agree that the W3C will seek to provide recommendations rather than exact standards.\n\nThe next day, Netscape Navigator 1.0 is released for Microsoft Windows, X Windows on Unix, and Apple Macintosh.\n\nUnlike other commercial products which are sold in the store, Netscape Navigator is following the model of other web software and making it available for free over the Internet. The business plan is to dominate the market first and then monetize later via adverts on the Netscape website and a paid premium version of the software.\n\nThe day after that, CERN announces that it in order to fund the building of the Large Hadron Collider, it can no longer support the W3C.\n\n

Retrospective

\n\nAt the beginning of this story, the web is nothing more than a big dream. Tim Berners-Lee has no idea whether his project will be successful or end in disaster. He just gives it his best shot.\n\n“A group of individuals holding a common dream and working together at a distance brought about a great change.” — Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web\n\nWhether you are beginning a small project or creating your own company, you can draw inspiration from Sir Timothy and his bobsleigh metaphor. When you are first starting, a huge effort is required just to get any movement at all.\n\n\n\nBut once this work is done, it begins to get easier. Things start to move by themselves and can move very quickly. At this point, you don’t need to keep pushing; you just need to get in and steer.\n\n\n\n“The people of the Internet built the Web, in true grassroots fashion.” -—Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web\n\nBut this is not the story of just one man. Many others are involved in the success of the World Wide Web—some are mentioned in this article, and I apologise to the many others left uncredited. There are too many to mention in full, but you know who you are.\n\nHistory is full of small, forgettable events that in the years ahead, turn out to have massive impact. One example of this is the role that J. Allard, who is today known more for his work on the XBox, plays in determining who wins the lion’s share of the browser market.\n\nLike we saw with Ray Tomlinson in Part One, the young J. Allard is someone who understands that combining a smart idea with the risky strategy of acting entirely on your own initiative might actually pay off well for both himself and his employer.\n\nIn the early years of the Web, much of the progress is made by students and hobbyists experimenting and learning from one another.\n\nBut as we close the curtain on this act, the Web has become big business. The stage is set for Netscape Communications, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft to slug it out with each other.\n\nJoin me in Part Three for the First Browser War.