Short History of the WWW

http://www.w3.org/2007/Talks/0530-webhistory-tbl/

Tim Berners-Lee

MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

World Wide Web Consortium

This talk

Remember back before the Web?
the fundemental change: Universality
Spirit of Web development

Pre-Web

now difficult to explain what it was like!

Documentation systems do not work together
Attempts to unify fail from imposing too much
Difficult to explain what WWW will be like

CERN: The European Particle Physics Laboratory

CERN: Atlas Detector

Pre-web at CERN

Need to bridge

People from all over the world
Different sorts of information
Different organizations

1980: Enquire

> ENQUIRE
Enquire V 1.1

Hello!
Opening file (PSK-PCP)VAC-V1:ENQR...

PSB Vacuum Control System                    (concept)  <   O>
--- ------ ------- ------

 [ 1] described-by: Enquiry System
      An experimental system for which this is a test.

 [ 2] includes: Vacuum History System
      Records and displays slow changes in pressure.

 [ 3] includes: Vacuum equipment modules
      Perform all the hardware interface

 [ 4] includes: Control and status applications programs
      Provide operator interaction from the consoles.

 [ 5] described-by: Controle du System a Vide du Booster 11-2-80
      Operational specification of the software

 [ 6] includes: PSB Pump Surveillance System         PCP 228
      Allows rapid monitoring of pressure changes

[number      ]

Solution

Make minium requirements of adopters
Abstract space includes all conceivable systems
Universal space

1989: Web memo

Circles and arrows again...

Circles and arrows diagram

1990: WWW design

URI is global identifier, having one is good
URI schemes have different properties
- HTTP scheme allows publish and lookup
- HTTP allows many data formats
  - HTML is a language for hypertext
  - .. but links not typed.