Q4 by Jessica

Qestin4:What are the origins of the internet? Who invented the worldwide web?

Answer:The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was aseries of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today.

The first paper on pack swithing theory was published in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964. which was a major step along the path towards computer networking. The other key step was to make the computers talk together.

In September 1969 BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was connected. By the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the budding Internet was off the ground.

In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications.

In October 1972, there was the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public. It was also in 1972 that the initial "hot" application, electronic mail, was introduced. This was a harbinger of the kind of activity we see on the World Wide Web today, namely, the enormous growth of all kinds of "people-to-people" traffic.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee

Web Inventor and Founding Director of the World Wide Web Foundation

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working as a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. With many scientists participating in experiments at ‪CERN and returning to their laboratories around the world, these scientists were eager to exchange data and results but had difficulties doing so. Tim understood this need, and understood the unrealized potential of millions of computers connected together through the Internet.

Tim documented what was to become the World Wide Web with the submission of a proposal specifying a set of technologies that would make the Internet truly accessible and useful to people. Despite initial setbacks and with perseverance, by October of 1990, he had specified the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today’s Web (and which you may have seen appear on parts of your Web browser): HTML, URI, and HTTP.

He also wrote the first Web page editor/browser (“WorldWideWeb”) and the first Web server (“‪httpd“). By the end of 1990, the first Web page was served. By 1991, people outside of ‪CERN joined the new Web community, and in April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web technology would be available for anyone to use on a royalty-free basis.

A graduate of Oxford University, Tim teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a 3Com Founders Professor of Engineering and in a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at CSAIL. He is a professor in the Electronics and Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and author of Weaving the Web and many other publications.