computer science

History of the World Wide Web

History of the World Wide Web is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand History of the World Wide Web rather than just read about it. In short: The World Wide Web ("WWW", "W3" or simply "the Web") is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and videoconferencing do.

Key takeaways

History of the World Wide Web belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect History of the World Wide Web to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History of the World Wide Web from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The World Wide Web ("WWW", "W3" or simply "the Web") is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and videoconferencing do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in 1989. He proposed a "universal linked information system" using several concepts and technologies, the most fundamental of which was the connections that existed between information. He developed the first web server, the first web browser, and a document formatting protocol, called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). After publishing the markup language in 1991, and releasing the browser source code for public use in 1993, many other web browsers were soon developed, with Marc Andreessen's Mosaic (later Netscape Navigator) being particularly easy to use and install, and often credited with sparking the Internet boom of the 1990s. It was a graphical browser which ran on several popular office and home computers, bringing multimedia content to non-technical users by including images and text on the same page. Websites for use by the general public began to emerge in 1993–94. This spurred competition in server and browser software, highlighted in the Browser wars which was initially dominated by Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Following the complete removal of commercial restrictions on Internet use by 1995, commercialization of the Web amidst macroeconomic factors led to the dot-com boom and bust in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The features of HTML evolved over time, leading to HTML version 2 in 1995, HTML3 and HTML4 in 1997, and HTML5 in 2014. The language was extended with advanced formatting in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and with programming capability by JavaScript. AJAX programming delivered dynamic content to users, which sparked a new era in Web design, styled Web 2.0. The use of social media, becoming commonplace in the 2010s, allowed users to compose multimedia content without programming skills, making the Web ubiquitous in everyday life.

Background

Precursors The underlying concept of hypertext as a user interface paradigm originated in projects in the 1960s, from research such as the Hypertext Editing System (HES) by Andries van Dam at Brown University, IBM Generalized Markup Language, Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu, and Douglas Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based memex, which was described in the 1945 essay "As We May Think". Other precursors were FRESS and Intermedia. Paul Otlet's project Mundaneum has also been named as an early 20th-century precursor of the Web.

ENQUIRE In 1980, Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, built ENQUIRE, as a personal database of people and software models, but also as a way to experiment with hypertext; each new page of information in ENQUIRE had to be linked to another page. When Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE, the ideas developed by Bush, Engelbart, and Nelson did not influence his work, since he was not aware of them. However, as Berners-Lee began to refine his ideas, the work of these predecessors would later help to confirm the legitimacy of his concept. During the 1980s, many packet-switched data networks emerged based on various communication protocols (see Protocol Wars). One of these standards was the Internet protocol suite, which is often referred to as TCP/IP. As the Internet grew through the 1980s, many people realized the increasing need to be able to find and organize files and use information. By 1985, the Domain Name System (upon which the Uniform Resource Locator is built) came into being. Many small, self-contained hypertext systems were created, such as Apple Computer's HyperCard (1987).

Return to CERN Berners-Lee's contract in 1980 was from June to December, but in 1984 he returned to CERN in a permanent role, and considered its problems of information management: physicists from around the world needed to share data, yet they lacked common machines and any shared presentation software. Shortly after Berners-Lee's return to CERN, TCP/IP protocols were installed on Unix machines at the institution, turning it into the largest Internet site in Europe. In 1988, the first direct IP connection between Europe and North America was established and Berners-Lee began to openly discuss the possibility of a web-like system at CERN. He was inspired by a book, Enquire Within upon Everything. Many online services existed before the creation of the World Wide Web, such as CompuServe, Usenet, Internet Relay Chat, Telnet and bulletin board systems. Before the internet, UUCP was used for online services such as e-mail, and BITNET was also another popular network.

1989–1991: Origins

CERN

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History of the World Wide Web

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History of the World Wide Web claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History of the World Wide Web before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History of the World Wide Web ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History of the World Wide Web

In research: History of the World Wide Web appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History of the World Wide Web in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History of the World Wide Web is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics History of computing, History of the Internet, World Wide Web, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History of the World Wide Web outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study History of the World Wide Web in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History of the World Wide Web means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain History of the World Wide Web out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is History of the World Wide Web in simple terms?

Why does History of the World Wide Web matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History of the World Wide Web?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History of the World Wide Web.