On this day in 1989, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, submited his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web. implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web’s subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web.
In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet:
I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web.
— Tim Berners-Lee
Berners-Lee published the first website, which described the project itself, on 20 December 1990; it was available to the Internet from the CERN network. The site provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server and a website. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee first posted, on Usenet, a public invitation for collaboration with the WorldWideWeb project.
In a list of 80 cultural moments that shaped the world, chosen by a panel of 25 eminent scientists, academics, writers and world leaders in 2016, the invention of the World Wide Web was ranked number one, with the entry stating: “The fastest growing communications medium of all time, the Internet has changed the shape of modern life forever. We can connect with each other instantly, all over the world.”
Berners-Lee, 2005
Useful police report…
Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American pianist Bill Payne who co-founded with Lowell George the American rock band Little Feat. Their best-known songs are ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Sailin Shoes’. Payne has also worked and recorded with J. J. Cale, Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Toto, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks and Robert Palmer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-GwdaKrn8
