Course Modules:
Comprehensive
Web Search
Strategies
The concept of easy access to distributed documents was first proposed by Vannevar Bush in an article in Atlantic Monthly in 1945. At that time, nothing even remotely like the Internet existed and the article sounded like something out of a Jules Verne novel.
Ted Nelson expanded the concept in a system he called Xanadu in the late 60’s and early 70’s and even coined the term "hypertext" to describe the method of linking distributed documents stored on networked computers. But, the computers and networks of the day just hadn’t evolved to the point where the system would work.
It wasn’t until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that readily accessible networks were in place that would allow users to actually utilize the concepts proposed by Bush and Nelson.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, at the time working for CERN, a research institution in Switzerland, proposed the creation of a "World Wide Web" of computers connected by the Internet. The use of a simple universal computer language call HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) would allow these computers to use HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) to transfer documents and images directly from a host computer to the client computer in graphic form.
In February of 1993, a group of young computer science students working at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, released Mosaic, the first web browser to use a graphic user interface (GUI). Mosaic incorporated helper applications that made it possible to seamlessly access both text and images right in the browser window. Using the World Wide Web proposed by Tim Berners-Lee became a simple matter of "point and click". The easy access to distributed documents envisioned by Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson became reality.
Netscape, the commercial spin-off of Mosaic was released to the public as "freeware" in early 1995. The Web rapidly expanded beyond the academic community and exploded on the national consciousness in the summer of 1995 with a media blitz unparalleled in recent years.
Widespread use of the internet/world wide web has grown faster than any other new technology in history.
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