History of The World Wide Web

History Of The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as e-mail also does. The history of the Internet dates back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

The hypertext portion of the Web in particular has an intricate intellectual history; notable influences and precursors include Vannevar Bush's Memex, IBM's Generalized Markup Language, and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu.

The concept of a home-based global information system goes at least as far back as "A Logic Named Joe", a 1946 short story by Murray Leinster, in which computer terminals, called "logics," were in every home. Although the computer system in the story is centralized, the story captures some of the feeling of the ubiquitous information explosion driven by the Web.

Read more about History Of The World Wide Web:  1979–1991: Development of The World Wide Web, 1992–1995: Growth of The WWW, 1996–1998: Commercialization of The WWW, 1999–2001: "Dot-com" Boom and Bust, 2002–present: The Web Becomes Ubiquitous

Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, world, wide and/or web:

    So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.
    Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)

    Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.
    Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

    Everything in the world exists to end up in a book.
    Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898)

    In sunburnt parks where Sundays lie,
    Or the wide wastes beyond the cities,
    Teams in grey deploy through sunlight.

    Talk it up, boys, a little practice.
    Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
    No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.
    Thom Gunn (b. 1929)