A bit OT - Urban Myths?

[Matthew Seaman]

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On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 11:01:59AM +0100, Peter McGarvey wrote:
> * Paul Robinson <paul at iconoplex.co.uk> [2003-07-16 09:52:41 BST]:
> > mainly driven by the web, invented circa early-94
>=20
> My recollection of history is that the web was "invented" in 1980 by Tim
> Berners-Lee, and that he developed his ideas, eventually "inventing"
> HTTP in 1990.

I think 1980 is a bit too early.  As I heard the story, the whole web
concept was inspired by Scientists at CERN sending each other LaTeX
documents, and using a NeXTSTEP program to view the formatted text.
TBL wrote the first ever web browser under NeXTSTEP.  Which means that
it can't have been available before 1988 or so, as the original NeXT
cube wasn't released before then.  In fact, TBL's CV at
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/, gives 1989 for the invention of
the WWW and 1990 as the date for the original browser
'WorldWideWeb.app'.

As I remember it, the WWW hit the big time about 1993 --- ie. articles
on the evening news, numbers of people outside acadaemia becoming
aware, first Windows/Mac browsers appearing for free download.  I was
at Oxford at the time: I remember a discussion on one of the internal
mailing lists about how the official Oxford gopher site had just gone
live, right when all the rest of the world were losing interest in
gopher and putting out their first web sites.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

--=20
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK

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