Invention of the Internet and the World Wide Web

     Internet is, by definition, a global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols. This means that it is like a huge technology spider web that connects all computers and databases. Internet was a massive project that dozens of scientists had a part in. Each of these scientists then merged their newly developed features and technologies to form what we know today as the internet. Two names listed as the "inventors" or "fathers" of the internet are Bob Kahn, an American electrical engineer, and Vint Cerf, an American developer.

     The Internet was originally used as a government weapon. The United States began using the Internet during the Cold War in order to communicate and shared data with one another. This is similar to what we use the internet for today but it is so easily accessible and even difficult to avoid that everyone is able to use it. The Internet today does not have as much value to it because of that reason: it is easy to use and access.

     World Wide Web is the information system that allows for documents to be connected to each other through hyperlinks. Essentially, World Wide Web is what enables users to search for information by moving from one document to the other. It was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee with the assistance of Robert Cailliau. Berners-Lee originally conceived and developed WWW to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world. It was used for much more basic sharing than it is today since we have millions of websites all connecting to different information and all being able to be found through browsers like Google Chrome and Bing for example. The original state of WWW is a mere sub-category for what we have today on the internet, it was much simpler.

     The Internet and World Wide Web work side by side but WWW would be nothing without the Internet. The Internet is the milk, and WWW is the cereal. They work together but milk could stand alone if you needed it to. The first website created was also created by Tim Berners-Lee and it was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web. It went live for the first time on August 6, 1991. It ran on a NeXT computer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. The address to this website is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject. The website still works and it is fascinating to see what the highest level of technology looked like in 1991!

Sources:

Cern accelerating science. CERN. (n.d.). https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web. 

Cern accelerating science. CERN. (n.d.). https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web. 

A&E Television Networks. (n.d.). The invention of the internet. History.com. https://www.history.com/.amp/topics/inventions/invention-of-the-internet. 

A&E Television Networks. (n.d.). Who invented the internet? History.com. https://www.history.com/.amp/news/who-invented-the-internet. 

Business Insider. (n.d.). Flashback: This is what the first-ever website looked like. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/flashback-this-is-what-the-first-website-ever-looked-like-2011-6?amp.