IP: Web birth dates

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Robert Cailliau <robert.cailliau@cern.ch>
Date:     Sat, 11 May 2002 09:32:22 -1000
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>


I'm sorry to have found this message so late, my reply is also late.


Time to get some myths out of the way:

The best reference to date for the history of the Internet and the Web is
the book http://www.oup.co.uk/isbn/0-19-286207-3
and in German at http://www.dpunkt.de/buecher/3-89864-108-2.html
My name is on it almost by accident (Oxford University Press wanted
it that way), but James Gillies is the person who did all the
research and discovered quite a number of myths and onversights.
I'm sure there are still inaccuracies in that book too, and it is
also not complete.

The first web server went on line in December 1990.  There is of
course no exact date for this, because we gradually came to a state
in which the thing worked. It was somewhere towards the end of
December that we felt it was sufficiently stable that it could be
called "working".

During 1991, a number of servers in institutes in Europe installed web
servers.

Then there are two other "important" dates:

12 December 1991 when the first server in the USA came on line
(Stanford Linear Accelerator Center).  See
http://www-project.slac.stanford.edu/webanniv/

April 1993, when I succeeded in convincing CERN to put the software
library in the public domain. That was only necessary to convince the
Americans that they could actually use the library software to build
browsers.

I guess it's a long, forever uphill struggle to convince Americans
that they have not necessarily invented everything.
Sigh.
                           Robert Cailliau

Web Communications & Public Education      | Treasurer IW3C2
Education & Technology Transfer Division   | IW3C2
C E R N                                    | POBox 12, CERN
European Organization for Nuclear Research | CH - 1211 Geneve 23
CH - 1211 Geneve 23                        |
http://www.cern.ch/                        | http://www.iw3c2.org/

tel: +41 22 76 75005
personal: http://www.cern.ch/CERN/Divisions/ETT/WPE/People/RobertCailliau/



>Maybe you two should try to reply to this (Dave Farber's widely read IP
>list).
>
>David
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-ip-sub-1@admin.listbox.com
>[mailto:owner-ip-sub-1@admin.listbox.com]On Behalf Of David Farber
>Sent: Wednesday, 09 January, 2002 18:15
>To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com
>Subject: IP: Web birth dates
>
>
>
>>Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2002 11:41:52 -0500
>>To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
> >From: Ari Schwartz <ari@cdt.org>
>>Subject: Web birth dates
>>
>>Hi Dave,
>>
>>Interesting that this should come up.  A calendar of the great dates of
>>computer, freedom and privacy should be arriving this week in the mail to
>>past attendees of the CFP conference to promote CFP2002 --
>>http://www.cfp2002.org
>>
>>Diana Peterson, a Georgetown graduate student, did extensive research to
>>help us put this together.  We could not find an exact day for the first
>>Web page.  The closest we came was in Tim Berners-Lee's book "Weaving the
>>Web" which says that:
>>
>>"The WorldWideWeb browser/editor was working on my machine and Robert's,
>>communicating over the Internet with the info.cern.ch server by Christmas
>>Day 1990."
>>
>>Tim then discribes the effort to put the CERN phone book up in HTML.
>>
>>Since this was not very precise, we decided that the date we would use in
>>the CFP2002 calendar was April 30, 1993 -- "CERN makes WWW free of charge."
>>
>>Anyone who has not attended CFP or is not on the CFP mailing list can
>>request a calendar for free (while they last) simply by sending me their
>>mailing address.
>>
>>Hope this helps.
>>
>>Ari
>>
>>------------------------------------
>>Ari Schwartz
>>Associate Director
>>Center for Democracy and Technology
>>1634 I Street NW, Suite 1100
>>Washington, DC 20006
>>202 637 9800
>>fax 202 637 0968
>>ari@cdt.org
>>http://www.cdt.org
>>------------------------------------
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Delivered-To: ip-sub-1-outgoing@admin.listbox.com
>>>>Delivered-To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com
> >>>X-Sender: farber@127.0.0.1
>>>>Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 11:01:00 -0500
>>>>To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com
> >>>From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
>>>>Subject: IP: from an IPer
>>>>Sender: owner-ip-sub-1@admin.listbox.com
>>>>Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>>>>
>>>>"Do you know if Dec. 13th was any kind of Web-related anniversary? I was
> >>>told that
> >>>the first Web page was posted on 12/13/1991, but haven't been able to
> >>>confirm. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated."
> >>>
> >>>For archives see:
> >>>http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
> >
> >
> >--
>
>For archives see:
>http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/



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