The Web Superhighway 


  What Is It? | History  | Alphabet  | Statistics   |   Links  | Map | Builders | Digital |  



What Is It?

The internet is a network of computers transferring data along communications lines.



History

The Internet was started in the late 1960's as a response to the Cold War-a defense research network and fail-safe communications system in case of a national emergency.It originally connected four universities: University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Center, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The Internet today consist of over 10,000 different computer services and networks operated by governments, corporations, and non-profits.

The World Wide Web did not come into existence until the early 1990's. Tim Berners-Lee, working at the CERN in Switzerland, wanted to find a way to link several of his reasearch projects together. His wiillingness to share his "hyperlink" ideas with others led the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) to utilize his ideas in creating Mosaic, the first graphical browser.

Marc Anderson, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, saw commercial potential for graphical browsers. Upon graduation, Marc teamed up with Jim Clark to create Netscape. After several years of watching Netscape's increasing success, Microsoft created Intrnet Explorer.


What is the Internet composed of?     

Statistics

a new web site added every 4 seconds
web traffic doubles every day
over 300 million users


created by Robert A. Blake

© 09-2001