Celebrating the birth of the World Wide Web

[#1]

This month it is 24 years since the world wide web began and nearly a quarter of a century later it seems to be one of the inventions us Brits are most proud of. Read on to find out which other of the nation’s inventions we feel particularly proud of ...

Eight in Ten Brits are most proud of Tim Berners-Lee for creating the Internet

Recent Plusnet research reveals that of this great nation’s inventions Brits feel particularly proud of the following:

• The telephone (83%)
• The steam engine (82%)
• The internet (81%)
• The radar (78%)
• The toilet (71%)

Looking at the internet specifically (come on, we’re Plusnet after all), it was interesting to see that it’s the slightly older generations who are the proudest of this invention, with those over the age for 45 scoring it 83%, compared to only 77% of 25-34 year olds. When Plusnet started out in 1997, we offered dial-up internet boasting typical speeds of just 28.8 kbps. Some 16 years later, we’ve launched Plusnet Unlimited Fibre, a superfast broadband offering customers speeds of up to 76 Mb/s – over two and half thousand times faster. It's fair to say that we've come quite a long way since then!

And the man that made it all happen...

• Tim Berners-Lee was Born 8^th June 1955
• He studied physics at Oxford before pursuing a career in software engineering
• In 1980, whilst working for CERN in Geneva, he first described his vision for a globally connected computer system based on the concept of 'hypertext”' and built a prototype called 'enquire'.
• In 1989 he published a paper called 'Information Management: A Proposal' in which he married up hypertext with the Internet, to create a system for sharing and distributing information not just within a company, but globally. He named it the World Wide Web.
• A full copy of the original proposal can be viewed here, believe it or not this is technically the world’s first website! Note his manager's comment at the top of the paper - "Vague but exciting".

Do you remember the first time you used the internet, what was it like and what did you do? Let us know by leaving a comment below (keep it clean!) ...

[#2]

Yes I remember the first time I used the internet, and it pre-dated the World Wide Web. You should know better than to confuse the two.

[#3]

Let's kill this myth - TBL did not create the internet - he just published a protocol (HTTP) that made it easier - the internet existed way before that - see Wikipedia - Arpanet for example.

[#4]

er... The post is talking about WWW, not the internet? That's quite clear... "In 1989 he published a paper called ‘Information Management: A Proposal’ in which he married up hypertext with the Internet, to create a system for sharing and distributing information not just within a company, but globally. He named it the World Wide Web."

[#5]

I reckon I was probably one of the first, if not the first Internet user in my village (Helpston) as my archived copies of The Helpston Chronicle show that the editor was inviting contributors to send in their copy by email for the first time in December 1996. I didn't receive any but eventually much of the village got on line. One day we might even get fibre!

[#6]

Netscape navigator, I was stopping at my cousins house and she had the internet and it was all very exciting. Still being a kid the first website I visited was Nickelodeon. Exciting times!

[#7]

Good old Netscape Navigator. I remember being forced into using that at Uni. I recall spending a fair bit of time in the library downloading C64 ROMs onto 3.5" floppies

[#8]

Um... a whole quarter of a decade eh? How time has flown over the last 2.5 years... 😛

[#9]

Jesus... no wonder my internet keeps going slow motion mode, Plusnet are trying to fit the last 24 years all into just 2.5 years!

[#10]

Oops! Put the typo down to a glitch in the Matrix ;) I've corrected it now. Anything we can help with Ernest?