Happy Birthday WWW

[doodab]

Email, usenet, ftp (HENSA was dead useful, got C & Fortran compilers for my Atari so I could do all my coursework at home then save it on a disk), we used to telnet around all over the place to get into unix servers running chat programs as well. First you had to use kermit to connect to a pad to get onto JANET then the world was your oyster.

Then we got X terms in the lab as well as PCs. Giddy stuff, graphics and everything. Maple was like magic only better.

Hard to imagine what we have now looking back. The departmental computer was a unix box with 8 386 processors and we were given CPU quotas. I think my phone has more horsepower now.

[cailin maith]

I think my phone has more horsepower now.

It's mental isn't it? I look at Jnr and how he uses the iPad without any hassle (and my mobile phone for that matter) and I think he is never going to know what it's like not to just have the whole world at his fingertips.

I remember when my parents didn't even have a house phone.

[NickFitz]

Of course being paid by CERN helped him in his generosity ;-).

I was paid £3 at university to try out this new "hypertext" system and give my comments. From memory it looked like the web we're used to today (i.e. blue underlines), but I've no idea if that was this or some other hypertext system. I was there 89-92, so "the internet" really meant email and usenet, at least as far as us undergrads got to use it.

They found a backup of the first website recently and put it back up: The World Wide Web project

[doodab]

They found a backup of the first website recently and put it back up: The World Wide Web project

I have the source code for CERN httpd on some old linux CDs somewhere, from the days when you used to get mail order distros.

[NickFitz]

I have the source code for CERN httpd on some old linux CDs somewhere, from the days when you used to get mail order distros.

And of course TBL did all the original WWW work on a NeXT, Steve Jobs' other computer. The NeXT operating system, NextStep, later became the foundation for Mac OS X and iOS (hence all the classes named NSSomethingOrOther in Cocoa). So, in theory, you should be able to get the original WWW source to build for the iPhone without a huge amount of trouble

[NickFitz]

TBL has done an AMA on Reddit this evening: I am Tim Berners-Lee. I invented the WWW 25 years ago and I am concerned and excited about its future. AMA : IAmA

Top-voted question and answer at the moment:

totharescue: What was one of the things you never thought the internet would be used for, but has actually become one of the main reasons people use the internet?

timbl: Kittens.