The WorldWideWeb application is now available as an alpha release (1991)

"This project is experimental and of course comes without any warranty whatsoever. However, it could start a revolution in information access."

To give a taste of how quickly this exploded. This is 1991. By 1995 I was working at a small ISP. The ISP existed only because there was demand to get on the web. I started my masters in 1996 but was then lured away by a job at Cox Interactice Media, a several hundred person division that Cox Enterprises setup just so it could have a web presence. That's just 5 years after this annoucement, and well, we know where it went from there. All for something that didnt exist when I graduated highschool.<p>Try to imagine inventing somthing with that kind of impact that quickly.

I was writing for NeXTWorld magazine at the time I saw TimBL's newsgroup announcement.<p>I mentioned it to a colleague at the magazine, John Perry Barlow, who emailed his friend Mitch Kapor at EFF, saying "[Kehoe] passed on the following about something called World Wide Web, which sounds rather like Project Xanadu emerging from the Matrix almost without design. This could be cool." Here's the original email (screen grab from my NeXT machine): <a href="http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/barlow.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/barlow.gif</a><p>I emailed TimBL and told him I'd asked my editors to let my co-editor and I write about it. TimBL was enthusiastic but warned me, "We have to avoid any embarrassment about CERN code being 'given away for free' when developed with European taxpayers' money. We are working on this but don't say anything in print about how one gets hold of the code without checking for latest developments first!" Here's the original email from TimBL: <a href="http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/timbl.gif" rel="nofollow">http://www.fortuityconsulting.com/images/timbl.gif</a><p>TimBL had no reason for concern -- my editors decided the story was not newsworthy and we never ran the piece.<p>I was working on a book proposal at the time, titled "Plugging Into the Planet," which introduced the Internet and explained how computer users could get connected to Usenet, Gopher, and WAIS. I added a section on the WWW. Random House, Bantam, and other major publishers turned it down. I was told books about modems didn't sell well.<p>When I saw TimBL's announcement, I felt it was an important project and worthy of notice. Still, I thought that calling it the WorldWideWeb was vainglorious; after all, how worldwide was it really, running on the handful of NeXTs that had Internet connections? It wasn't until John Markoff's December 1993 article in the New York Times describing NCSA Mosaic for Windows that popular interest in the web burgeoned. Even then, there were very few ISPs, modems were slow, and there was no easy way to create and serve web pages. That we now have the web is a testament to both the power of TimBL's vision and the enthusiasm of everyone who encountered it.

There was a turning point for me, somewhere between the purchase of a 33.6 modem and upgrade from 30 monthly hours to unlimited dial-up, when the Web changed from a curiosity to the best thing ever.<p>The meme back then was that you could go to the Louvre from your home computer. But before those two upgrades it felt like it would be faster and cheeper to just take a plane. I had much more fun with CD-ROMs from computer magazines.<p>The other essential turning point was the discovery that the phone company would only charge you a single pulse from midnight to 6 am. So at 12:01, the horde of nerds would dispute the few available lines of the ISPs to try to get connected. No taximeter, no Moms inadvertently grabbing the phone and disconnecting you. That kind of shaped a whole generation's habits and schedules.<p>At about the same time there was also a change of culture. I remember having to call people to tell them I sent an email a few days ago. When people began answering me the same day, things started to get interesting. And then there was SPAM and we lost that forever :)<p>Or least until Gmail came along and rescued us with its magical bayesian filter and petabytes of data.

Google demands a login to allow me to read the article on my iPhone.<p>Not the WWW that Tim imagined.

"We also released an iPhone version of the WorldWideWeb Application. Unfortunately, we were turned down by Apple for acceptance into the iTunes store."

Initially Tim Berners-Lee wanted to call it 'The Information Mine' - abbreviated to 'TIM'

Here's my personal story:<p>I distinctly remember a professor showing me a web browser (not Gopher!) before I left for a second-semester and summer co-op, my Sophomore year in college (starting around January/February, and running until August). I graduated High School in May of 1991, so then I was a Freshman in college in August of 1991 (right around when this was posted.) I was a Sophomore in August of 1992, and it would have been right around December of 1992 when I saw the browser, if my memory is correct.<p>I've been trying to figure out if my memory is flawed... And if not, what browser he would have been using.<p>It couldn't have been NCSA Mosaic, because 0.1a wasn't out until June 1993:<p>ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Windows/Archive/MosaicHistory.html<p>Or Netscape Navigator, because 0.9 wasn't out until 1994.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Release_history" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Release_hist...</a><p>So, December of 1992, probably not a NeXT (I don't think), certainly an X-Windows system. Probably a Sun.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web</a><p>That leaves Erwise, ViolaWWW...<p>Or maybe my memory is flawed. Maybe I didn't see the graphical WWW browser until after I got back from my co-op, so some time around August of 1993. :(<p>If I remembered the professor's name, I could email him and ask!<p>I wonder how many people saw the WWW before me? If you look at how long people have been web browsing, what percentile am I in? 99.9%? 99.99%? 99.999%? How many nines, damnit! :)<p>Maybe it was a NeXT. I know my school later had NeXT boxes. That would certainly make my remembered timeline more plausible...

'also remote indexes to be interrogated for lists of useful documents'<p>Now I know why the home page of most web sites is named index.html

what are you doing? nothing, just creating http, html and a browser and client. that's what i call a "getting things done" attitude.

wait, can anyone please tell me the story behind this post? i understand it is about some primitive text browser for web but why (and how) is it on google groups? google wasn't even there at that time. and how can one add a post and date it in the past?

Some intrepid blogger ought to do a round-up of all the seminal Usenet posts like this. Thinking of Linus announcing Linux, Larry announcing his pagerank/webcrawler, etc... Although, it seems like something like this is probably already out there (?)

wow. Does anyone know where one could get that tarball?

Does anybody remember "Internet in a Box" (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_a_Box" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_a_Box</a>)? I remember back in the day I was so excited to purchase my own browser software. My how things have changed.

I remember -- I think it was 1992 -- being one of the first "normal" people on the internet. Got in through a service called Delphi.<p>It had a menu option to use www. The screen came up with white text on a black background. Some words were in reverse -- black text on a white background.<p>I remember thinking "Weird. What would anybody ever use this stuff for?"<p>After all, it wasn't like it was as useful as ftp, telnet, gopher, etc. It was just a bunch of text in a weird format. (Remember there was no mouse then. I imagine you had to tab to get on the links? Never found out, because I couldn't figure out what to do with it.)

I have actually used it. What a terrible browser! Every link opens new window? No thanks! and so many menus.. the only good thing is the included editor (i love colored text)...<p>Sorry Tim, i will try ViolaWWW instead which looks more promising. In every case, nothing beats CD-ROMs

So cool. I love seeing this sort of history. Thanks for posting!

The web's big bang ?

It'll never catch on.

This story is from 1991. Mentioning this in the title would be helpful.

Why can't I read this on my iPhone? For some reason, it asks me to log in.

Google groups lies! The author was Al Gore!