I went to college during that magical period when the internet was born. I remember sitting at a UNIX terminal in the library and laughing at the [image] tags stuck into the text of the Columbia University Website. “Self,” I said to myself, “who the hell is ever going to bother with pictures on the net?” Then I continued to chuckle as I headed back to Columbia’s Gopher site.
Heh.
Anyway, my question is: What was the first Website? This term leaves some room for semantic debate, so let’s put it this way - Who pioneered the www.something.com revolution? In my mind, Amazon.com was the killer app in this field - it was the first place I knew of that you could do anything productive on the web. But I know that those coffee pots and fishbowls in England came first.
Anyone know the specifics? I’d love to see a timeline.
Not an exact answer, but reading Tim Berners Lee’s book Weaveing the Web may help you understand more about how the web was create and evolved to it’s current place.
The internet was started in the 60’s or early 70’s as a government gateway for communicating between government defense sites. It was originally called DARPANET with the D coming from defense and then it was shortened to ARPANET when it was used for more than just defense sites (ie. colleges and research facilities). Finally somewhere between 1985 and 1990 its use expanded into the private sector and it became to be known simply as the internet.
Things moved much more rapidly from here. First HTML was developed and then about '93 the first widely-used graphical browser “Mosaic” was developed, which made accessing the internet much more convenient and useful. When “Netscape” came out in '94 things finally really took off and the internet evolved into what we know it as today.
I am guessing sdimbert was using the term internet to describe it during the period when it was actually called the internet and not for the earlier part of its history when it was called DARPANET and ARPANET and then it wouldn’t be necessary to be on the 25-year college plan.
“The truth does not make a good story; that’s why we have art.”
OK, I checked out the site that Dragwyr recommends, and found this:
“Between the summers of 1991 and 1994, the load on the first Web server (“info.cern.ch”) rose steadily by a factor of 10 every year.”
So, I guess the didactic answer to my question is info.cern.ch. That was the first website.
But, that’s not really exciting enough - it shouldn’t be the answer. And, as the Original Poster, I’m going out on a limb and risking getting this thread tossed out of GenQuest. So be it. I guess what I am really asking is:
What website was the first that made you say "Holy Mackrel! Forget Lynx! This WWW stuff ROCKS!!!
For me it was a live webcast from MacWorld Expo. The idea that I could actually watch live footage (4 fpm!) from another place over my computer woke me up and made me realize that there was real potential to change the way the world works.
Oh, come now, quadell, surely you’ve seen one to inspire such a reaction. Maybe one inspired by a newspaper columnist, perhaps? Or one in which offbeat questions are answered in a witty manner by other visitors to the site? Think, now. There has to be one…
NYC IRL III
is on April 15th. Do you have what it takes?
Isn’t Lynx a web browser? You probably mean gopher. Anyway, in the “hey, have you trid this thing called Mosaic yet?” days (mosaic was the first graphical browser), most sites were academic or computer related. I think web search engines were the first ‘killer’ sites. Altavista was one of the first, as I recall - run by DEC (remember them?) at http://www.altavista.digital.com/ and only later bought the altavista.com domain for millions of dollars.
Isn’t Lynx a web browser? You probably mean gopher. Anyway, in the “hey, have you trid this thing called Mosaic yet?” days (mosaic was the first graphical browser), most sites were academic or computer related. I think web search engines were the first ‘killer’ sites. Altavista was one of the first, as I recall - run by DEC (remember them?) at http://www.altavista.digital.com/ and only later bought the altavista.com domain for millions of dollars.
No, he means Lynx the web browser. The difference between Lynx (links… get it?) and other web browsers is that Lynx is a non-graphical browser. Text only. What quadell is saying is that they have seen no reason for graphics on the web.
“Sometimes I think the web is just a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.” — Dilbert
Oh yes, the web was created at CERN (the European Center for Nuclear Research) so I would assume the first web page was there. They have a site describing the birth of the Web at: http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/ACHIEVEMENTS/web.html
“Sometimes I think the web is just a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.” — Dilbert
