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More => Music, Movies, Politics, and Other Cheap Thrills => Topic started by: JimH on December 22, 2015, 06:22:27 am

Title: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: JimH on December 22, 2015, 06:22:27 am
As part of a discussion about Apple (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=101683.0), Steve Jobs, the mouse, and the Internet, I read the wiki topic on Tim Berners-Lee.  Berners-Lee conceived the World Wide Web and implemented the first browser, called WorldWideWeb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb), then later called Nexus.  

It was on December 25, 1990, when it first successfully ran.

Happy Birthday, WorldWideWeb.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: JimH on December 22, 2015, 06:45:54 am
We registered jriver.com eighteen months later on June 19, 1992.

We could have registered amazon.com (1994) or google.com (1997) but then one of them might have had to call itself JRiver.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: glynor on December 22, 2015, 07:05:17 am
Meh. GopherNet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29) Forever!
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: DarkPenguin on December 22, 2015, 01:33:11 pm
I used gophernet.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: JimH on December 22, 2015, 01:40:36 pm
Good boy, Tom...

(http://cdn.na16.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/goldy-gopher.jpg)
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: blgentry on December 22, 2015, 02:22:47 pm
That's pretty neat (the anniversary). Thanks for posting!

Brian.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: glynor on December 22, 2015, 03:51:36 pm
I used gophernet.

I did too.

It did not escape my notice when posting about it, by the way, that Gopher was invented in JRiver's lovely home state.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: glynor on December 22, 2015, 04:01:50 pm
One of the cool things about early implementations of the Web that has been, now, mostly lost down the memory hole is that when originally developed, all browsers were both viewports and HTML editors. One of the "controversies" around Mosaic, early on in fact, was that it "wasn't the real web" because you couldn't edit pages with it (it was a passive viewing browser only, which we now just call a web browser).

On the original WorldWideWeb browser, you could click "edit" on any page and start changing things right there without switching apps. That ability to edit inline didn't return until many, many years later, and was part of the original inspiration to build Wikis.

While I heard about the newfangled Web thing early on, I didn't have the cash to buy a Next Cube, so I had to wait a while before jumping on that bandwagon.  But Usenet was pretty cool back then, so there was plenty to do, and plenty of flamewars to get in over random stuff.  ;)
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: KingSparta on December 22, 2015, 08:19:29 pm
I ran a BBS from 1983 or so (Center City BBS) with 1 line, and a 300 baud Hayes modem, then later I had 5 phone lines, and added internet service for my users in the mid 90's (for a very short time). at that point BBS systems were obsolete.

I used CompuServe in the early days.
Title: Re: December 25th is the 25th anniversary of the first browser
Post by: GadgetBoy on December 23, 2015, 09:46:18 am
I also ran a BBS on a Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem (modded to go as high as 450! woo hoo!) using CNET software. Single phone line, too.

I had a 5 MEGABYTE drive connected to the C64. Man, it was high tech...