In 2011 it appropriate to commemorate 20 years since the announcement of the Web in several online forums and the release of the WWW library code, libWWW. The library was a kind of "roll your own" tool kit that gives volunteer programmers pieces they need to write their own web browsers and servers. Their efforts - more than half a dozen browsers in 18 months - to save the Web project poorly funded and are removed from the Web development community.
LibWWW written by the primary inventor of the Web Tim Berners-Lee and his assistant technical Jean-François Groff. Browser that allows including the browser by Pei Wei's Viola browser Midas by Tony Johnson, and, later, the famous browser Mosaic by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at NCSA.
Another important Web anniversary is the Web's first proposal (March 1989) and the first demo browser, server, and Web site (December 1990).
To mark 20 years of public Web, we released an online mini-movie of our permanent "Revolution" exhibition for the first time:
The growth of the Web and Internet has transformed the ways we use and share information, perhaps as completely as the printing press did beginning half a millennium ago. There is no end in sight.
Yet many of the records of this epic transformation—and the little-known 100 year history of brilliant innovation leading up to it—are rapidly disappearing.
Today's online world is becoming the first mass medium to incorporate nearly all previous forms of communication, from books, to money transfers, to television. But few, including key decision makers and even networking professionals, are familiar with its evolution, or the dozens of earlier systems with lessons still to teach.
Program
The CHM Internet History Program records the history of computer networking including the Web, the internet, and mobile data. Launched in 2009, it is one of the first general programs in this area by a major historical institution. The program covers networking as both a technical invention and a new form of communication with a growing impact on society.
Founding curator Marc Weber has researched the history of the Web since 1995, and co-founded two of the first organizations in the field. The Program works with CHM staff, trustees, and advisors with special expertise in networking, including many pioneers. It also collaborates with a number of peer institutions.
You can help the Program identify materials world-wide in need of preservation including software, screenshots, documents, and oral histories.
The "Networking" and "Web" galleries of the Museum's signature exhibition “Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing” are among the first major permanent exhibits to address these great inventions of our time. "Mobile Computing" and several other galleries include related parts of the story.
The Internet History Program is actively building on the extensive networking materials and exhibits at CHM, a unique base with roots going back more than three decades, as well as materials assembled by the Web History Project.
Scope
The history of computer networking contains three main stories, or levels. We focus on the top two:
Online systems (like the Web), from the 1950s forward. We collect materials on:
Information systems like the World Wide Web and its predecessors
Networked applications, from FTP to email to multiplayer games
Roots of online systems in timesharing, hypertext, and pre-computer information retrieval systems
Mobile applications
Networks (think Internet), from the 1950s forward. We collect materials on:
"Networks of networks" like the Internet and its predecessors
Wide area networks like the ARPANET and its competitors
Local area networks like Ethernet and its competitors
Wireless and mobile networks
"Wires": The telecommunications infrastructure first laid in the mid-19th century for the telegraph and telephone. We have a few representative items, but mostly work with peer institutions that systematically collect this history.
Materials
The museum preserves materials that capture the history of networking, including:
Software, data, and sites
Photographs, films, and videos
Physical artifacts
Personal and business papers and letters
Technical notes and project documentation
Oral histories of pioneers and significant participants, preserved using video, audio, and transcripts
Topic Groups and Advisors
These groups consist of pioneers and experts who advise the Internet History Program, and who may participate in our upcoming discussion groups.
BBSs
Commercial Networking
e-Commerce
Early Networks
Early Web
Electronic Publishing and e-books
Email
Internetworking
Journalism and Blogging
Legal History of Networking
Mobile data
Networking in Science
Online Systems
Sensor Networks and Smart Dust
Videotex
Virtual Worlds
Voice over Networks
Web Design
Wikis and Commenting Systems
Historians and researchers
Source : computerhistory.org
