Happy 31st Birthday World Wide Web!
Where would we be without the World Wide Web? For a start, the team at Yellow Cherry would be out of a job for one thing, but how often throughout the day do you find yourself searching for something online? The majority of our phones now rely on the internet to provide us access to our banking, calendar and perhaps more importantly, surf the web for products, how-to guides and of course pub quiz answers. This has all become possible thanks to the British inventor Sir Tim Bernes-Lee as 31 years ago today, 12th March 1989, he submitted the proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web (WWW). We take for granted how easily we can find information online but where did the ‘World Wide Web’ come from?
Back in 1989, Sir Tim Bernes-Lee and his team were responding to the influx in demand for sharing information between education institutions around the world while he worked at CERN, a world-class physics research facility in Europe. The facility had thousands of scientists who worked for CERN but lived in their home countries around the world. In order for their work to be able to continue, reliable communication was necessary for research to continue. From there, the idea was formed to combine computers, data networks and something called a hypertext which together created a global information sharing system. This then allowed scientists to access details with more ease.
When we mention hypertext you probably recognise the term but may not be clear on what it actually is.
A hypertext is a software system that has been created to allow cross-referencing between words, phrases and images. This allows us to select a word or phrase which can connect us to another piece of relevant information. This is why thinking of a web can help in understanding these connections as various pieces of information are being sourced from different destinations. You will see hypertexts being used to link words to other relevant web pages. A document that contains the hypertexts was referred to as a ‘Hyper Project’ which was labeled the ‘WorldWideWeb’. Each hyper document then has it’s own individual tag which was named ‘Uniform Resource Locator’ (URL). The ‘web’ of hypertexts is then to be viewed in a ‘browser’ which is a piece of software that is used to navigate the WorldWideWeb.
Sir Tim Bernes-Lee launched the very first website and browser in December 1990. Check out how websites have evolved: First Website
This website was primarily used by the scientists who worked at CERN but soon enough they had competitors who wanted to try their hand at creating a browser.
1995 – Microsoft had launched its browser ‘Internet Explorer’ and were soon an add on the Microsoft 95 packages which soon became the more popular browser of their time.
2003 – Apple launched its browser ‘Safari’
2004 – Mozilla launched ‘Firefox’ which soon became a competitor
2008 – Google launched ‘Chrome’
2013 – Google Chrome overtook Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox dubbing it the most popular internet browser
2015 – Microsoft got rid of Internet Explorer and replaced the browser with ‘Edge’ (a.k.a Explorer in disguise).
If you are interested in knowing the stats for browser use, visit StatCounter to see the current browser usage.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
So now when you are using the WorldWideWeb think about how everything connects and allows you to search for your latest amazon order. Happy 31st Birthday WorldWideWide, thank you Sir Tim for making our research and access to information easy and for creating something that lets the team here at Yellow Cherry create awesome websites for our clients.
If you are looking for a new website or you have a website that is just needing a new look, then we can help. Contact Us (<< see, a hypertext – thanks Sir Tim!)
Sources:
Britannica