This is what the world’s first website looked like! Impressive?
For it’s time, it was incredible to those who saw the potential for how it could change our lives in the future. For those who were late catching on, time has shown how this is one invention where life will never be the same again. It has changed our lives so prolifically that even the early adopters couldn’t have predicted the impact it has had our lives.
It is so ingrained into our lives that we not only use it, but we depend on it for….literally most things. The first thing we reach for in the morning? Our phone….be it to check out Facebook, or the weather, or check our emails.. amongst a hoard of other usages. The work place is no a longer paper pushing zone, but a collection of networks and intranets relying in part on the business brought in by the fabulous website that represents that company, and the digital marketing campaigns created bespoke by a dedicated specialist to suit that company’s marketing strategy.
So where did it all start?
The image above shows the very first website ever published, the brainchild of computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who first conceived the idea back in 1989. He is the man who developed HTML, HTTP and URLs, acronyms that are still popular today. The British scientist started by writing a proposal at research institute CERN for a “global hypertext” system. The idea was put into practice and the world’s first server was introduced two years later and made public, on August 6, 1991.
Originally, the idea of the Internet was to afford the ability to share information between physicists in universities and institutes around the world. Perhaps even Sir Tim didn’t see the coming impact his creation would make.
The plain text page ‘website’ that made it’s debut laid the groundwork for the future of the Internet. I’m sure you know at least one person who still thinks the World Wide Web and the Internet are one and the same. Incorrect. Although the WWW is closely linked to the Internet, they are not the same. The BBC explains, “The Internet is a huge network of computers all connected together. The World Wide Web is a collection of webpages found on this network of computers. Your web browser uses the Internet to access the Web.” Hope that clears the matter up…..
So how big has the impact been?
If we look at the Government statistics for the UK alone (published in May), we see that 87.9% of adults used the Internet in the previous three months. That’s more than 45.9 MILLION people!!!!
In 1993, two years after the launch of the first server in 1991, it was calculated that there were more than 500 known web servers and the world wide web accounted for 1% of internet traffic. Twenty years later, there were an estimated 630 MILLION websites online. Thanks to the web’s simplicity and the fact that technology was made royalty free in 1993, it has enjoyed rapid adoption and development.
Quite possibly the best invention since sliced bread!
