[LINK] Happy 20th Birthday WWW

[Roger Clarke]

>>  -----Original Message-----
>>  Sylvano wrote on Friday, 13 March 2009 11:42 AM
>>  March 13 marks 20 years of World Wide Web, though for me it
>>  is a little later as I only met the web when acquiring the
>>  Mosaic browser in '93 I think, which was the beginning of the
>>  end of using Archie, Veronica and gopher.

At 10:24 +1100 14/3/09, Tom Koltai wrote:
>That's not quite how I remember it.
>>From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners_Lee
>Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA (born 8 June,
>1955) is an English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with
>inventing the World Wide Web. On 25 December, 1990 he implemented the
>first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the
>Internet with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at
>CERN.

I had a quick look in Tim's 1999 book 'Weaving the Web' (pagination 
as per the paperback edition published by HarperBusiness).

"In March 1989 I took the leap to write a proposal [to CERN, for 
money to combine his existing Enquire product with hypertext" (p. 21).

It got nowhere.

He tried again in May 1990, "and again it got shelved" (p. 22).

"In October 1990 I began writing code for the Web" (p. 28).

"By mid-November [1990] I had a client program - a point-and-click 
browser/editor - which I just called WorldWide Web" (p. 29).

"By December [1990] it was working with the Hypertext Markup Language 
(HTML) I had written ..." (p. 29).

"I also wrote the first Web server ... on my desltop NeXT machine" (p. 29).

"The WorldWideWeb browser/editor was working on my machine and Robert 
[Cailliou]'s, communicating over the Internet with the info.cern.ch 
server by Christmas Day 1990" (p. 30).


I see nothing in the book that supports the proposition that there 
was a significant event on 13 March 1989 (unless drafting a twice 
unsuccessful bid for funding counts as significant).

But I'm all for champagne flowing on all *sorts* of dates  (:-)}


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW