It’s hard to imagine a time when the internet didn’t exist. In those days people had to get their news from the newspaper or TV. If they wanted to share family photos and life updates it was done through the postal service, usually in the form of a photocopied newsletter at Christmas time.
All that changed 20 years ago, what seems like a lifetime ago and for some people it was. At the time Tim Berners-Lee was a contractor at European nuclear research organization CERN. What he did on August 6, 1991 changed media interaction the same way innovations like television, film, radio, and even paper had affected generations past. With access to the largest Internet node on the continent Berners-Lee launched the first web site ever.
Before then the Internet was just a way for computers to talk to one another. Creating the World Wide Web allowed users to join the conversation by presenting the information in a format that was easy to browse and understand. The first thing he posted was a simple text page at info.cern.ch that contained links and instructions on how to create a website.
The concept caught on like wildfire and soon the internet was populated with simple HTML sites. Fancier ones contained multi colored text, comical fonts, and repeated tiled backgrounds. Advancements in web site design since then are astounding. They have transformed technical specifications into an art form. Web development and design is a career that is still strong despite the recession and a popular major for college students.
Check out how Lego's online presence has changed over the years:
The World Wide Web has become a necessity in millions of people’s everyday lives all over the globe. But it almost wasn’t. Berners-Lee originally considered dubbing his project the Mine of Information which would have resulted in web addresses beginning with MOI instead of WWW.
Besides TechCareers.com, what’s your favorite web site? Let me know what makes it special in the comments below.
By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer with experience in web, film, photography and animation as well as traditional fine arts like painting and sculpting. In addition to writing for TechCareersBlog.com, she is co-founder of design and promotion company. Heather’s spare time consists of making puppets, teaching Sunday School, building Legos and doing science experiments with her children.
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