#web30

Happy 30th birthday to the World Wide Web!

The internet is a huge network of computers all connected together, but it was the world wide web that made the technology into something that linked information together and made it accessible to everyone. In essence, the world wide web is a collection of webpages found on this network of computers – your browser uses the internet to access the world wide web.

The world wide web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 – originally he was trying to find a new way for scientists to easily share the data from their experiments. Hypertext (text displayed on a computer display that links to other text the reader can immediately access) and the internet already existed, but no one had thought of a way to use the internet to link one document directly to another.

Berners-Lee created the world wide web while he was working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. His vision soon went beyond a network for scientists to share information, in that he wanted it to be a universal and free 'information space' to share knowledge, to communicate, and to collaborate. Berners-Lee also made the world’s first web browser and web server.

The world wide web opened up the internet to everyone, not just scientists. It connected the world in a way that made it much easier for people to get information, share, and communicate. It has since allowed people to share their work and thoughts through social networking sites, blogs, video sharing, and more.

Oh no! It’s Count Crackula and his legions of Bogons! Call Captain Internet! 

On this 30th anniversary of that marvelous invention, the World Wide Web,  we bring you an early educational/advertising comic book, The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERFboy, no. 1, October 1991. Filled with bad puns, word searches of computing vocabulary (ARPANET, KERMIT, THREE WAY HANDSHAKE), and the thrill of connecting to the Internet (via modem with speeds up to 19.2 kbps), Captain Internet and “The LAN That Time Forgot” reassures and encourages schools and businesses. 

While it’s important to note that the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same, we thought you’d enjoy this example of the quirky exuberance of early computing. And here’s a link if you’d like to see a restoration of the first-ever website.