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25 Years: How the Web began [message #306622] Mon, 21 December 2015 18:08 Go to next message
Anne & Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne & Lynn Wheel
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25 Years: How the Web began
http://www.zdnet.com/article/25-years-how-the-web-began/

First webserver in US was on (CERN sister lab) SLAC VM370 system
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
and
http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.sht ml

trivia: GML was invented at science center in 1969, a decade later it
morphs into ISO standard SGML, and after another decade it morphs into
HTML at CERN. some past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
and science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech


We were working with NSF director to interconnect the NSF supercomputer
labs and were suppose to get $20M. Then congress cuts the budget, some
number of other things happen, and finally NSF releases an RFP (based
largely on what we already have running). Internal politics prevent us
from bidding. The NSF director tries to help by writing the company a
letter copying the CEO, but that just makes the internal politics
worse. As regional networks connect into the sites, it morphs into the
NSFNET backbone (precursor to the modern internet). some old email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet

During part of this, the communication group was spreading internal
misinformation about how they might be able to play. Somebody collects
a lot of their email and forwards it to us ... small part, heavily
snipped and redacted to protect the guilty:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109


--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306742 is a reply to message #306622] Tue, 22 December 2015 21:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
philo[1][2] is currently offline  philo[1][2]
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On 12/21/2015 05:08 PM, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
> 25 Years: How the Web began
> http://www.zdnet.com/article/25-years-how-the-web-began/
>
> First webserver in US was on (CERN sister lab) SLAC VM370 system
> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml
> and
> http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/firstpages.sht ml
>
> trivia: GML was invented at science center in 1969, a decade later it
> morphs into ISO standard SGML, and after another decade it morphs into
> HTML at CERN. some past posts
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml
> and science center
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
>
>
> We were working with NSF director to interconnect the NSF supercomputer
> labs and were suppose to get $20M. Then congress cuts the budget, some
> number of other things happen, and finally NSF releases an RFP (based
> largely on what we already have running). Internal politics prevent us
> from bidding. The NSF director tries to help by writing the company a
> letter copying the CEO, but that just makes the internal politics
> worse. As regional networks connect into the sites, it morphs into the
> NSFNET backbone (precursor to the modern internet). some old email
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet
>
> During part of this, the communication group was spreading internal
> misinformation about how they might be able to play. Somebody collects
> a lot of their email and forwards it to us ... small part, heavily
> snipped and redacted to protect the guilty:
> http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006w.html#email870109
>
>



Yep. I still recall my wife getting a computer in 1995 and using IE-2 to
get on the "net" ...It kind of scared me.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306746 is a reply to message #306622] Tue, 22 December 2015 22:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:

> 25 Years: How the Web began

I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
to be _widely_ used by the general public.

In looking at some old magazines, it seems that around the year 1997
first AOL references, then web addresses began to appear. At that
point I don't think e-commerce had started, but the web might have
had catalogs and easier GUI access.

I believe the web grew very rapidly after 2000, perhaps needing only
five years to become commonplace instead of a new thing. I think
that's rather remarkable for the general public to latch onto something
so quickly.

Of course, the web's predecessors, such as text based file sharing,
TELNET remote access, email, and such were around for a while. I'm
thinking of the widespread general public's "connection" to the web
with GUI access.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306748 is a reply to message #306746] Tue, 22 December 2015 23:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
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On Tue, 22 Dec 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>
> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
> to be _widely_ used by the general public.
>
I think by 1994 things had changed a lot.

The universities here only got it about 1989, and then a year or two later
the first local ISP (a non-profit, I think because they couldn't imagine
it as a money maker) appeared, you'd pay $25 or so for a relatively few
number of hours per month. Their first "servers" were just some computers
in a closet, so I can imagine they started with just a few phone lines.
Others followed. The only reason I knew about that ISP at the time was
because of a listing in "Boardwatch" magazine, that had started out about
BBS systems, but was then covering the emerging ISP field.

In 1994, we started hearing about the "internet" in the local paper. One
university women's group had discovered there was porn there, and thought
something should be done, rather than seeing the potential.

In Ottawa, the Ottawa Freenet started up, actually I think it was in 1993,
and they started with a boom, a big influx of users who clearly knew what
the internet was, but had previously had no access (or perhaps more likely
had access at school or business, but not at home). They had to build up
really fast because of the growth of the user base.

By 1995, big companies like cable and telephone were starting to offer
internet. Some had come in by buying an existing ISP, they had grown in
number since 1990, and memory says there was already consolidating,
mid-tier ISPs buying up some of the other ones. The landscape changed so
by 2000, about 2 of the earliest ISPs still remained intact (the others
bought up by larger companies).

And in 1995, it wsa pretty easy to sample things at computer shows and
even movie festivals. No, it didnt' mean everyone was online, but that
things had changed quite a bit from 1990 or before that.

The Montreal Freenet went online in August of 1997, after three years of
planning and construction, and failed after four months. They had decided
to go for a big system, having seen Ottawa have growth problems at the
beginning, but had to wait for government funding. In the meantime, the
internet had become much more accessible, if still relatively expensive
for the time you got. So the Montreal Freenet had expected a large influx
right away, and that never came. The people who knew about access had
already found it elsewhere, leaving people who had little money, or people
who didn't really know about the internet yet. And that latter group was
going to take too much effort to convert into users.

Michael
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306757 is a reply to message #306622] Wed, 23 December 2015 06:22 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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On Mon, 21 Dec 2015 15:08:07 -0800
Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> wrote:

> trivia: GML was invented at science center in 1969, a decade later it
> morphs into ISO standard SGML, and after another decade it morphs into
> HTML at CERN.

<nitpicK>HTML is an SGML defined by an SGML DTD - there are many
others, docbook springs to mind as well as a number of article DTDs used in
scientific publishing.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306760 is a reply to message #306757] Wed, 23 December 2015 06:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Andy Burns is currently offline  Andy Burns
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Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> HTML is an SGML defined by an SGML DTD

Not since HTML5 ...
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306761 is a reply to message #306746] Wed, 23 December 2015 06:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ahem A Rivet's Shot is currently offline  Ahem A Rivet's Shot
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On Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:24:08 -0800 (PST)
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> wrote:
>
>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>
> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
> to be _widely_ used by the general public.
>
> In looking at some old magazines, it seems that around the year 1997
> first AOL references, then web addresses began to appear. At that
> point I don't think e-commerce had started, but the web might have
> had catalogs and easier GUI access.

Early adopters were starting commercial websites as early as 1994,
online shopping was certainly possible in 1995 (I used an image of the
"Internet Shopping Network" in a Feb 1995 advert - www.internet.net!). I
expect payment used existing mechanisms intended for phone use and may well
have been shockingly insecure.

Thinking back more, commercial internet users discovered the web
around 1994/95 and rejoiced that there was a corner of the internet that
wasn't actively hostile to commercial influences, where they were even
acceptable! They grabbed it with both hands - and then started asking how
to get people to see their sites. However the internet itself didn't hit
wide public awareness for a couple of years after that. In 1994/95 I spent
a lot of my time telling people what the Internet was and what it was good
for.

Five years later everyone knew the internet was the web.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306765 is a reply to message #306746] Wed, 23 December 2015 08:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
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hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>
> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
> to be _widely_ used by the general public.
>
> In looking at some old magazines, it seems that around the year 1997
> first AOL references, then web addresses began to appear. At that
> point I don't think e-commerce had started, but the web might have
> had catalogs and easier GUI access.
>
> I believe the web grew very rapidly after 2000, perhaps needing only
> five years to become commonplace instead of a new thing. I think
> that's rather remarkable for the general public to latch onto something
> so quickly.
>
> Of course, the web's predecessors, such as text based file sharing,
> TELNET remote access, email, and such were around for a while. I'm
> thinking of the widespread general public's "connection" to the web
> with GUI access.

The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
don't recall the countries.

It took the US a very, very long time to catch up.

/BAH
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306767 is a reply to message #306765] Wed, 23 December 2015 10:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Lawrence Statton is currently offline  Lawrence Statton
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jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:

> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
> don't recall the countries.

You recall badly.

The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306768 is a reply to message #306748] Wed, 23 December 2015 10:47 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 11:10:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Black wrote:


> The universities here only got it about 1989, and then a year or two later
> the first local ISP (a non-profit, I think because they couldn't imagine
> it as a money maker) appeared, you'd pay $25 or so for a relatively few
> number of hours per month. Their first "servers" were just some computers
> in a closet, so I can imagine they started with just a few phone lines.
> Others followed. The only reason I knew about that ISP at the time was
> because of a listing in "Boardwatch" magazine, that had started out about
> BBS systems, but was then covering the emerging ISP field.

I remember Boardwatch magazine (and its opinionated editor). I
think he was based in Columbine which later gained notoriety.

Also, a lot of BBS users were very interesting in expanding
beyond the BBS or BBS networks into the Internet, even if
they weren't sure what it was, they wanted in. "The Internet"
became a popular buzzword by about 1988. It generated a
lot of excitement among techies.

There was a magazine, Wired, touting it. I remember noticing
that all the authors had @ email addresses. Some of the BBS's
began to offer email connectivity.

As I recall it, in the 1990s, there was an Internet available, but
it was mostly for technies who knew how to use a "shell account".
Most of the user interfaces were Unix oriented, with terse
command-line based operatives. To access Usenet, there was
something "rn" or "trn". At that time, it wasn't really used
by the widespread general public, even though the use of
personal computers was growing.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306770 is a reply to message #306768] Wed, 23 December 2015 12:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mausg is currently offline  mausg
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On 2015-12-23, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 11:10:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Black wrote:
>
>
>> The universities here only got it about 1989, and then a year or two later
>> the first local ISP (a non-profit, I think because they couldn't imagine
>> it as a money maker) appeared, you'd pay $25 or so for a relatively few
>> number of hours per month. Their first "servers" were just some computers
>> in a closet, so I can imagine they started with just a few phone lines.
>> Others followed. The only reason I knew about that ISP at the time was
>> because of a listing in "Boardwatch" magazine, that had started out about
>> BBS systems, but was then covering the emerging ISP field.
>
> I remember Boardwatch magazine (and its opinionated editor). I
> think he was based in Columbine which later gained notoriety.
>
> Also, a lot of BBS users were very interesting in expanding
> beyond the BBS or BBS networks into the Internet, even if
> they weren't sure what it was, they wanted in. "The Internet"
> became a popular buzzword by about 1988. It generated a
> lot of excitement among techies.
>
> There was a magazine, Wired, touting it. I remember noticing
> that all the authors had @ email addresses. Some of the BBS's
> began to offer email connectivity.
>
> As I recall it, in the 1990s, there was an Internet available, but
> it was mostly for technies who knew how to use a "shell account".
> Most of the user interfaces were Unix oriented, with terse
> command-line based operatives. To access Usenet, there was
> something "rn" or "trn". At that time, it wasn't really used
> by the widespread general public, even though the use of
> personal computers was growing.

I had an Amiga, and there was a lot of hope that it would manage the
internet, so I heard of a lecturev on it at St. Andrews Collage in
Booterstown, so, as it was an open meeting, I went and sat down, about
30 years older than the rest of the audience. A man wandered in and
explained how to do it, Andy Mowatt, I think. From that it was all downhill
to Facebook.

--
greymaus
.
.
....
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306772 is a reply to message #306761] Wed, 23 December 2015 12:18 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
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On 2015-12-23, Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:

> Five years later everyone knew the internet was the web.

And, as usual, what Everyone Knew [tm] was wrong, since there's
a lot out there beyond port 80. This newsgroup, for instance.

--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306775 is a reply to message #306768] Wed, 23 December 2015 12:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
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On Wed, 23 Dec 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

> As I recall it, in the 1990s, there was an Internet available, but
> it was mostly for technies who knew how to use a "shell account".
> Most of the user interfaces were Unix oriented, with terse
> command-line based operatives. To access Usenet, there was
> something "rn" or "trn". At that time, it wasn't really used
> by the widespread general public, even though the use of
> personal computers was growing.
>
But I think there were surges, which were only small compared to what came
later.

Until there were commercial ISPs, access was quite limited. Once there
were commercial ISPs, that caused a big change, then a few years later,
more of the public got online, which dwarfed the earlier surge, and then
later "everyone" got online.

But as it was progressing, it was significant change early on (just as
with small computers), except the next surge was even bigger.

Michael
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306777 is a reply to message #306768] Wed, 23 December 2015 13:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
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hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes:
> I remember Boardwatch magazine (and its opinionated editor). I
> think he was based in Columbine which later gained notoriety.

pagesat did satellite broadcast of usenet ... i got pagesat receiver for
free in return doing ms/dos and a couple unix drivers for the pagesat
receiver ... and co-authoring an (june '93) boardwatch article.

i ran waffle BBS on ms/dos machine with complete pagesat usenet feed.

picture of sat dish in backyard.
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/pagesat.jpg

a decade earlier ... in HSDT project
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#hsdt

.... which included TDMA satellite system ... had 4.5M dishes in the
backyards of Yorktown Research on the east coast and Los Gatos Lab on
the west coast ... and 7M dish at the Austin plant site.

other trivia ... "GML" was chosen because "G", "M", and "L" are last
name first letter of former co-workers at the science center
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
and
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml


some pagesat/boardwatch past posts
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#38 Vanishing Posts...
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#39 I'll Be! Al Gore DID Invent the Internet After All ! NOT
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001h.html#66 UUCP email
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005l.html#16 Newsgroups (Was Another OS/390 to z/OS 1.4 migration
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006m.html#11 An Out-of-the-Main Activity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007n.html#17 What if phone company had developed Internet?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007p.html#16 Newsweek article--baby boomers and computers
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#19 IBM-MAIN longevity
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009j.html#19 Another one bites the dust
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009p.html#84 Anyone going to Supercomputers '09 in Portland?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009r.html#74 bulletin board
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010c.html#75 Posts missing from ibm-main on google groups
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2012b.html#92 The PC industry is heading for collapse
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2013l.html#26 Anyone here run UUCP?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014b.html#67 Royal Pardon For Turing
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2014e.html#38 Before the Internet: The golden age of online services
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2015d.html#57 email security re: hotmail.com

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306778 is a reply to message #306770] Wed, 23 December 2015 13:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
osmium is currently offline  osmium
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<mausg@mail.com> wrote:

> I had an Amiga, and there was a lot of hope that it would manage the
> internet, so I heard of a lecturev on it at St. Andrews Collage in
> Booterstown, so, as it was an open meeting, I went and sat down, about
> 30 years older than the rest of the audience. A man wandered in and
> explained how to do it, Andy Mowatt, I think. From that it was all
> downhill
> to Facebook.

If one had $100 in Time-Life stock in, say 1985, does anyone have any idea
what one would have left now after the Time-Warne-AOL fiasco? I remember
stacks of those free AOL disks at the grocery store checkout. I think
someone made out big time on the internet and some lost big time Steve
Case, for one, has a net worth of $1,370,000,000. You could buy a lotta CDs
for that, just guessing, freight trains full of them. Of course it would be
even nicer if you could convince someone else to pay for the CDs.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306779 is a reply to message #306778] Wed, 23 December 2015 13:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
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On Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 1:13:49 PM UTC-5, Osmium wrote:
> If one had $100 in Time-Life stock in, say 1985, does anyone have any idea
> what one would have left now after the Time-Warne-AOL fiasco? I remember
> stacks of those free AOL disks at the grocery store checkout. I think
> someone made out big time on the internet and some lost big time Steve
> Case, for one, has a net worth of $1,370,000,000. You could buy a lotta CDs
> for that, just guessing, freight trains full of them. Of course it would be
> even nicer if you could convince someone else to pay for the CDs.

What amazes me is how once hot-products suddenly become eclipsed by
something out. Visicalc by Lotus, then Excell. WordPerfect by Word.

How (why) did Facebook eclipse Myspace?

The AOL-Time-Warner debacle is probably worthy of a well researched
book, if the participants would be willing to talk candidly.

I _suspect_, at the time, both Time and Warner Bros people realized
that their traditional media--print and film--were obsolete,
being replaced by elecronics, and that they better be prepared
for it or be out of business. At the time, AOL looked to be
the "next big thing", so they grabbed it.

As to the TV/film industry, IMHO, it's being killed by an
explosion of middlemen, such as numerous lawyers involved
every step of the way, and taking a cut. We consumers are
paying higher prices for movie admissions, and on TV we're
now paying cable delivery fees and are forced to see
significantly more commercials.

As towarde traditional print, I think we're losing many
talented writers since modern print publications have lost
so much circulation and ad revenues, which have not been
replaced by electronic sources.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306785 is a reply to message #306748] Wed, 23 December 2015 15:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: tracymnelson

On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 11:10:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Black wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>>
>> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
>> to be _widely_ used by the general public.
>>
> I think by 1994 things had changed a lot.

I remember spending an afternoon in the summer of '94 snagging the Mosaic sources and
porting them to run on my SPARCstation (SunOS 4.2?). That was my first exposure to "the
Web". My ISP began offering "web space" a couple years later.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306789 is a reply to message #306775] Wed, 23 December 2015 15:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: JimP

On Wed, 23 Dec 2015 12:48:02 -0500, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>
wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Dec 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>> As I recall it, in the 1990s, there was an Internet available, but
>> it was mostly for technies who knew how to use a "shell account".
>> Most of the user interfaces were Unix oriented, with terse
>> command-line based operatives. To access Usenet, there was
>> something "rn" or "trn". At that time, it wasn't really used
>> by the widespread general public, even though the use of
>> personal computers was growing.
>>
> But I think there were surges, which were only small compared to what came
> later.
>
> Until there were commercial ISPs, access was quite limited. Once there
> were commercial ISPs, that caused a big change, then a few years later,
> more of the public got online, which dwarfed the earlier surge, and then
> later "everyone" got online.
>
> But as it was progressing, it was significant change early on (just as
> with small computers), except the next surge was even bigger.
>
> Michael

In 1988, we had BITNET at the university, and email to other networks
if we knew which relay to use and knew the email address of the person
we wanted to contact.

I heard about a nationwide BBS, I think it was a BBS, but the
connection charge was $5 per hour. Couldn't afford that. The people I
knew who had it, dialed a local number, and their modem was routed to
the site.

We got Usenet about 1991/992, and I found this newsgroup and several
others. I read them via a VT100 clone from home on my Amiga A1000. The
modem speed was 1200 baud.

My email address then was @cp6.bitnet

--
JimP.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306791 is a reply to message #306789] Wed, 23 December 2015 16:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2015-12-23, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:

> In 1988, we had BITNET at the university, and email to other networks
> if we knew which relay to use and knew the email address of the person
> we wanted to contact.
>
> I heard about a nationwide BBS, I think it was a BBS, but the
> connection charge was $5 per hour. Couldn't afford that. The people I
> knew who had it, dialed a local number, and their modem was routed to
> the site.
>
> We got Usenet about 1991/992, and I found this newsgroup and several
> others. I read them via a VT100 clone from home on my Amiga A1000. The
> modem speed was 1200 baud.
>
> My email address then was @cp6.bitnet

A local dialup BBS, Mind Link, added an Internet connection and treated
several newsgroups as if they were additional local groups. I made
my first appearance here on a.f.c in March 1989 as a218@mindlink.ca.
Not long afterwards I got AmiTCP running on my Amiga 2500 and
dialed in via PPP, which I later upgraded to Ethernet when a
local ISP became available.

--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306795 is a reply to message #306746] Wed, 23 December 2015 18:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
In article <62632034-1323-4728-95c8-a90b0e439a6f@googlegroups.com>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>
>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>
> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
> to be _widely_ used by the general public.

I was in the middle of that storm, participating in founding
a commercial ISP in 1993.

We saw demand explode in January of 1996. We were prepared for the
huge number of lines, but not for the hosting requests to place stuff
on our backbone.

The day I realised that this was not going to be just big, it was
going to be huge was March 1st 1996. We had worked the better part
of the night to get a commercial we site up at our makeshift hosting
center, and I went home, had a few hours sleep and a shower, and went
to catch a plane. They had decorated the entire plane with the url
(www.braathens.no) in 6 feet tall letters, dark blue on white.

This website was only a developers dream two days before.

They also collected around 20% of bookings, 2/3rds of which were
extra seats sold, on that site. That made them open their wallets
entirely to marketing and getting it production wuality.

> In looking at some old magazines, it seems that around the year 1997
> first AOL references, then web addresses began to appear. At that
> point I don't think e-commerce had started, but the web might have
> had catalogs and easier GUI access.
>
> I believe the web grew very rapidly after 2000, perhaps needing only
> five years to become commonplace instead of a new thing. I think
> that's rather remarkable for the general public to latch onto something
> so quickly.
>
> Of course, the web's predecessors, such as text based file sharing,
> TELNET remote access, email, and such were around for a while. I'm
> thinking of the widespread general public's "connection" to the web
> with GUI access.

The Internet has grown exponentially in traffic since it's inception
in the early 1970s. The rate was highest ca 2000, with a five month
doubling rate, now it is at around 20 months; up from ca 25 before
Netflix and pals.

-- mrr
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306798 is a reply to message #306748] Wed, 23 December 2015 18:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <alpine.LNX.2.02.1512222303180.19407@darkstar.example.org>,
Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Dec 2015, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>> On Monday, December 21, 2015 at 6:08:08 PM UTC-5, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>>
>>> 25 Years: How the Web began
>>
>> I'm trying to remmeber when the web got a 'critical mass' and began
>> to be _widely_ used by the general public.
>>
> I think by 1994 things had changed a lot.
>
> The universities here only got it about 1989, and then a year or two later
> the first local ISP (a non-profit, I think because they couldn't imagine
> it as a money maker) appeared, you'd pay $25 or so for a relatively few
> number of hours per month. Their first "servers" were just some computers
> in a closet, so I can imagine they started with just a few phone lines.
> Others followed. The only reason I knew about that ISP at the time was
> because of a listing in "Boardwatch" magazine, that had started out about
> BBS systems, but was then covering the emerging ISP field.

It was only in January 1991 that the s.k. CIX wars were won by the liberal
side, and commercial ISPs were allowed to operate freely. Before that may of the
core academic sites that had a lot of the interesting hosts resisted allowing
non-AUP (i.e. commercial) traffic onto their networks.

They had explcit vetting of the IP addresses alowed on to the core NSF
network, which until jan 1990 was THE core of the Internet. Then some
commercial ISPs in California made a public, non-AUP access point in
California; called it the Commercial Internet eXchange, CIX. And they
had their traffic directed there. They had an all-or-nothing peering
policy; you either peered with one of them or none at all. We, as
EUnet, half a world away, participated.

After a few months it succeeded. The academics started to defect and
had lines or tunnels to the CIX, and after a year we saw the last filter
on the NSFnet disappear. NSFnet had connected to CIX sometile during
that year.

The activist I remember from that time was Gordon Cook, who had weekly
submissions about the "war" for the Open Internet.

Now the academic sites are just fringe activities on this Internet.

> In 1994, we started hearing about the "internet" in the local paper. One
> university women's group had discovered there was porn there, and thought
> something should be done, rather than seeing the potential.
>
> In Ottawa, the Ottawa Freenet started up, actually I think it was in 1993,
> and they started with a boom, a big influx of users who clearly knew what
> the internet was, but had previously had no access (or perhaps more likely
> had access at school or business, but not at home). They had to build up
> really fast because of the growth of the user base.
>
> By 1995, big companies like cable and telephone were starting to offer
> internet. Some had come in by buying an existing ISP, they had grown in
> number since 1990, and memory says there was already consolidating,
> mid-tier ISPs buying up some of the other ones. The landscape changed so
> by 2000, about 2 of the earliest ISPs still remained intact (the others
> bought up by larger companies).
>
> And in 1995, it wsa pretty easy to sample things at computer shows and
> even movie festivals. No, it didnt' mean everyone was online, but that
> things had changed quite a bit from 1990 or before that.

Having mr Gates discover the Internet sometime during 1994 was also
a help.

>
> The Montreal Freenet went online in August of 1997, after three years of
> planning and construction, and failed after four months. They had decided
> to go for a big system, having seen Ottawa have growth problems at the
> beginning, but had to wait for government funding. In the meantime, the
> internet had become much more accessible, if still relatively expensive
> for the time you got. So the Montreal Freenet had expected a large influx
> right away, and that never came. The people who knew about access had
> already found it elsewhere, leaving people who had little money, or people
> who didn't really know about the internet yet. And that latter group was
> going to take too much effort to convert into users.

And you needed to have capacity and logistics in place, and use whatever
equipment was available at the time. Completely different from these
government funded ISPs that cropped up; with lots of expensive telco-grade
equipment but completely unprepared for the bandwidth boom that was
going to make this equipment obsolete in a few months.

-- mrr
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306799 is a reply to message #306767] Wed, 23 December 2015 18:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>
>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>> don't recall the countries.
>
> You recall badly.
>
> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.

And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
Interop october 1992 in Paris.

I happed to be there.

It all ran on Next computers, btw.

-- mrr
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306800 is a reply to message #306791] Wed, 23 December 2015 19:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: JimP

On 23 Dec 2015 21:25:36 GMT, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid>
wrote:
> On 2015-12-23, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In 1988, we had BITNET at the university, and email to other networks
>> if we knew which relay to use and knew the email address of the person
>> we wanted to contact.
>>
>> I heard about a nationwide BBS, I think it was a BBS, but the
>> connection charge was $5 per hour. Couldn't afford that. The people I
>> knew who had it, dialed a local number, and their modem was routed to
>> the site.
>>
>> We got Usenet about 1991/992, and I found this newsgroup and several
>> others. I read them via a VT100 clone from home on my Amiga A1000. The
>> modem speed was 1200 baud.
>>
>> My email address then was @cp6.bitnet
>
> A local dialup BBS, Mind Link, added an Internet connection and treated
> several newsgroups as if they were additional local groups. I made
> my first appearance here on a.f.c in March 1989 as a218@mindlink.ca.
> Not long afterwards I got AmiTCP running on my Amiga 2500 and
> dialed in via PPP, which I later upgraded to Ethernet when a
> local ISP became available.

I remember it now, America Online. AOL came later on.

--
JimP.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306816 is a reply to message #306791] Thu, 24 December 2015 04:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mausg is currently offline  mausg
Messages: 2483
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2015-12-23, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2015-12-23, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In 1988, we had BITNET at the university, and email to other networks
>> if we knew which relay to use and knew the email address of the person
>> we wanted to contact.
>>
>> I heard about a nationwide BBS, I think it was a BBS, but the
>> connection charge was $5 per hour. Couldn't afford that. The people I
>> knew who had it, dialed a local number, and their modem was routed to
>> the site.
>>
>> We got Usenet about 1991/992, and I found this newsgroup and several
>> others. I read them via a VT100 clone from home on my Amiga A1000. The
>> modem speed was 1200 baud.
>>
>> My email address then was @cp6.bitnet
>
> A local dialup BBS, Mind Link, added an Internet connection and treated
> several newsgroups as if they were additional local groups. I made
> my first appearance here on a.f.c in March 1989 as a218@mindlink.ca.
> Not long afterwards I got AmiTCP running on my Amiga 2500 and
> dialed in via PPP, which I later upgraded to Ethernet when a
> local ISP became available.
>

I got onto the internet via a German BBS back then, very expensive.


--
greymaus
.
.
....
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306820 is a reply to message #306816] Thu, 24 December 2015 05:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
Senior Member
In article <slrnn7nfdq.166.mausg@smaus.org>, <mausg@mail.com> wrote:
> On 2015-12-23, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2015-12-23, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In 1988, we had BITNET at the university, and email to other networks
>>> if we knew which relay to use and knew the email address of the person
>>> we wanted to contact.
>>>
>>> I heard about a nationwide BBS, I think it was a BBS, but the
>>> connection charge was $5 per hour. Couldn't afford that. The people I
>>> knew who had it, dialed a local number, and their modem was routed to
>>> the site.
>>>
>>> We got Usenet about 1991/992, and I found this newsgroup and several
>>> others. I read them via a VT100 clone from home on my Amiga A1000. The
>>> modem speed was 1200 baud.
>>>
>>> My email address then was @cp6.bitnet
>>
>> A local dialup BBS, Mind Link, added an Internet connection and treated
>> several newsgroups as if they were additional local groups. I made
>> my first appearance here on a.f.c in March 1989 as a218@mindlink.ca.
>> Not long afterwards I got AmiTCP running on my Amiga 2500 and
>> dialed in via PPP, which I later upgraded to Ethernet when a
>> local ISP became available.
>>
>
> I got onto the internet via a German BBS back then, very expensive.

My history is very interesting in the respect to Internet connectivity.

I had sort of usenet/arpanet access back in 1979, but that was very
store&forward; literally via tapes shipped weekly between my alma mater,
NHH and Stanford university. But it worked well enough to have email
and news/email lists connectivity.

My email then was ...!nhh!ve9.20378

I got online access via x.25 and a bbs (bbb, 1982, connectivity
established via x.25 in 1984, via 128k leased line in 1988). But
we had 1976, "the year of no net" where the international links were
withdrawn from the university budgets throughout Norway, and we had
to scramble for connectivity.

Then the unix user group stepped in, after a failed attempt at using
Nord (donated) machines as hubs two 386 machines with some unix on
them became the hubs for dialup access, in Kongsberg and Oslo.

They each had 8 serial ports for user access.

Fast forward to 1993, and the user group nonprofit became a
Limited (AS) company, and we got _lots_ of lines for dialup,
in 1994 we got E1s channalised connected directly to Portmaster
pm3s; and we had around 12 of those (x30 modems) in use.

At the most we had around 2000 modems around the country.

I had a leased line to my home since 1987, and had just
4 months with dialp ISDN (128K) before I connected to WIFi/pre wimax
and then adsl; cable and now have direct gigabit WDM access.

-- mrr
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306831 is a reply to message #306799] Thu, 24 December 2015 08:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Morten Reistad wrote:
> In article
<87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>
>>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>> don't recall the countries.
>>
>> You recall badly.
>>
>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>
> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>
> I happed to be there.
>
> It all ran on Next computers, btw.

The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
there have been ads before standardization?

/BAH
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306840 is a reply to message #306831] Thu, 24 December 2015 13:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rod Speed is currently offline  Rod Speed
Messages: 3507
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
"jmfbahciv" <See.above@aol.com> wrote in message
news:PM000527A4FC6319C6@aca40702.ipt.aol.com...
> Morten Reistad wrote:
>> In article
> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> don't recall the countries.
>>>
>>> You recall badly.
>>>
>>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>
>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>
>> I happed to be there.
>>
>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>
> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
> there have been ads before standardization?

You sure you aren't thinking about ads for something else like Minitel ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306848 is a reply to message #306831] Thu, 24 December 2015 23:24 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thursday, December 24, 2015 at 6:42:54 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
> Morten Reistad wrote:
>> In article
> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> don't recall the countries.
>>>
>>> You recall badly.
>>>
>>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>
>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>
>> I happed to be there.
>>
>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>
> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
> there have been ads before standardization?

I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2 dates
from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.

Before Mosaic, one couldn't access the Web from Windows, so that's the earliest
date for world+dog getting on the Internet.

John Savard
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306849 is a reply to message #306848] Thu, 24 December 2015 23:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
Messages: 2799
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Thu, 24 Dec 2015, Quadibloc wrote:

> On Thursday, December 24, 2015 at 6:42:54 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
>> Morten Reistad wrote:
>>> In article
>> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> > The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> > Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> > 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> > don't recall the countries.
>>>>
>>>> You recall badly.
>>>>
>>>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>>
>>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>>
>>> I happed to be there.
>>>
>>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>>
>> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
>> there have been ads before standardization?
>
> I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2 dates
> from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.
>
> Before Mosaic, one couldn't access the Web from Windows, so that's the earliest
> date for world+dog getting on the Internet.
>
Lynx came along in 1992, and one thing it can do is be run remotely. I
thought that was how early web browsing was done, especially since
originally it wasn't graphic. I thought after the WWW was announced, one
initially would connect to a computer somewhere that had the only working
browser, and then read pages that way. Lynx was just an extension of
that.

Michael
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306852 is a reply to message #306849] Fri, 25 December 2015 00:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Quadibloc is currently offline  Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
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Senior Member
On Thursday, December 24, 2015 at 9:37:35 PM UTC-7, Michael Black wrote:

> Lynx came along in 1992, and one thing it can do is be run remotely.

I used Lynx on Edmonton Freenet for a while, so I'm aware of its existence, but
like the pre-Web Internet, that isn't really for those who are unsophisticated
about computers.

No eye candy.

John Savard
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306853 is a reply to message #306848] Fri, 25 December 2015 02:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Stan Barr is currently offline  Stan Barr
Messages: 598
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
On Thu, 24 Dec 2015 20:24:36 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>
> I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2 dates
> from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.

There was also Arena about the same time as Mosaic.

>
> Before Mosaic, one couldn't access the Web from Windows, so that's the
> earliest
> date for world+dog getting on the Internet.

I was using Macs at the time, so was in it quite early. I remember
the excitement when Mosaic got inline graphics!
It was a loong time before I came across any Windows users online in
the UK.

--
Stan Barr plan.b@bluesomatic.org
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306855 is a reply to message #306853] Fri, 25 December 2015 05:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Robert Swindells is currently offline  Robert Swindells
Messages: 44
Registered: August 2012
Karma: 0
Member
On Fri, 25 Dec 2015 07:48:41 +0000, Stan Barr wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Dec 2015 20:24:36 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
>>
>> I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2
>> dates from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.
>
> There was also Arena about the same time as Mosaic.

And ViolaWWW from earlier still, I ran it on a PC fairly soon after it was
released.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306856 is a reply to message #306849] Fri, 25 December 2015 05:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
mausg is currently offline  mausg
Messages: 2483
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2015-12-25, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Dec 2015, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, December 24, 2015 at 6:42:54 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
>>> Morten Reistad wrote:
>>>> In article
>>> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>>>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>>> > jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> >> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> >> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> >> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> >> don't recall the countries.
>>>> >
>>>> > You recall badly.
>>>> >
>>>> > The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>>> > the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>>>
>>>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>>>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>>>
>>>> I happed to be there.
>>>>
>>>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>>>
>>> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
>>> there have been ads before standardization?
>>
>> I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2 dates
>> from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.
>>
>> Before Mosaic, one couldn't access the Web from Windows, so that's the earliest
>> date for world+dog getting on the Internet.
>>
> Lynx came along in 1992, and one thing it can do is be run remotely. I
> thought that was how early web browsing was done, especially since
> originally it wasn't graphic. I thought after the WWW was announced, one
> initially would connect to a computer somewhere that had the only working
> browser, and then read pages that way. Lynx was just an extension of
> that.
>
Lynx is still very useful..



--
greymaus
.
.
....
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306860 is a reply to message #306840] Fri, 25 December 2015 10:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jmfbahciv is currently offline  jmfbahciv
Messages: 6173
Registered: March 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
Rod Speed wrote:
>
>
> "jmfbahciv" <See.above@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:PM000527A4FC6319C6@aca40702.ipt.aol.com...
>> Morten Reistad wrote:
>>> In article
>> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> > The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> > Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> > 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> > don't recall the countries.
>>>>
>>>> You recall badly.
>>>>
>>>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>>
>>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>>
>>> I happed to be there.
>>>
>>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>>
>> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
>> there have been ads before standardization?
>
> You sure you aren't thinking about ads for something else like Minitel ?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
>
These weren't ads for computer hard/software. they were in the
personals section, IIRC. I knew they were host addresses of some sort
and wondered what kind of network protocol was being used since it
didn't look like a DECnet format.

It takes years to adapt and adopt a standard. I'm assuming those
addresses were the first trickles of people trying to move
on-line.

/BAH
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306861 is a reply to message #306831] Fri, 25 December 2015 02:35 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Morten Reistad is currently offline  Morten Reistad
Messages: 2108
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
In article <PM000527A4FC6319C6@aca40702.ipt.aol.com>,
jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> wrote:
> Morten Reistad wrote:
>> In article
> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> don't recall the countries.
>>>
>>> You recall badly.
>>>
>>> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>
>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>
>> I happed to be there.
>>
>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>
> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
> there have been ads before standardization?

I happened to work for the company that refused world wide exclusive
rights for the entire WWW. That was in 1990, when there wasn't even
a browser, and cern used nfs to disseminate documents.

And some people at cern wanted out, rather have it commercialised
externally than throw money at internal development.

Alas, this never happened,

-- mrr
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306864 is a reply to message #306856] Fri, 25 December 2015 13:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Michael Black is currently offline  Michael Black
Messages: 2799
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On Fri, 25 Dec 2015, mausg@mail.com wrote:

> On 2015-12-25, Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>> On Thu, 24 Dec 2015, Quadibloc wrote:
>>
>>> On Thursday, December 24, 2015 at 6:42:54 AM UTC-7, jmfbahciv wrote:
>>>> Morten Reistad wrote:
>>>> > In article
>>>> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>>>> > Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>>> >> jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>> >>
>>>> >>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> >>> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> >>> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> >>> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> >>> don't recall the countries.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> You recall badly.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>>> >> the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>>> >
>>>> > And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>>>> > Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>>> >
>>>> > I happed to be there.
>>>> >
>>>> > It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>>>>
>>>> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
>>>> there have been ads before standardization?
>>>
>>> I did some checking; Mosaic dates from 1993, and Netscape Navigator 2 dates
>>> from 1995, which is about when I started using the Internet.
>>>
>>> Before Mosaic, one couldn't access the Web from Windows, so that's the earliest
>>> date for world+dog getting on the Internet.
>>>
>> Lynx came along in 1992, and one thing it can do is be run remotely. I
>> thought that was how early web browsing was done, especially since
>> originally it wasn't graphic. I thought after the WWW was announced, one
>> initially would connect to a computer somewhere that had the only working
>> browser, and then read pages that way. Lynx was just an extension of
>> that.
>>
> Lynx is still very useful..
>
Yes, except now I run it on my own computer, have done that since
mid-2001.

So I ran it at my ISP for five years.

Michael
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306865 is a reply to message #306860] Fri, 25 December 2015 14:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Rod Speed is currently offline  Rod Speed
Messages: 3507
Registered: January 2012
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Senior Member
"jmfbahciv" <See.above@aol.com> wrote in message
news:PM000527BA44685599@aca4289a.ipt.aol.com...
> Rod Speed wrote:
>>
>>
>> "jmfbahciv" <See.above@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:PM000527A4FC6319C6@aca40702.ipt.aol.com...
>>> Morten Reistad wrote:
>>>> In article
>>> <87bn9hryl2.fsf@redbull.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>,
>>>> Lawrence Statton <lawrence@senguio.mx> wrote:
>>>> >jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> writes:
>>>> >
>>>> >> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>>>> >> The first time I saw the characters "www." was in the International
>>>> >> Herald when we were on a vacation trip. IIRC, this was 1985 -
>>>> >> 1987ish. The w^3 addresses were in ads of firms in Europe but I
>>>> >> don't recall the countries.
>>>> >
>>>> >You recall badly.
>>>> >
>>>> >The standard was not even published for the first time until 1991, and
>>>> >the work that let to that began in Spring of '89.
>>>>
>>>> And the first demo of the whole web setup took place in fall
>>>> Interop october 1992 in Paris.
>>>>
>>>> I happed to be there.
>>>>
>>>> It all ran on Next computers, btw.
>>>
>>> The trip couldn't have been that late. JMF died in 1995. Could
>>> there have been ads before standardization?
>>
>> You sure you aren't thinking about ads for something else like Minitel ?
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel

> These weren't ads for computer hard/software.
> they were in the personals section, IIRC.

Yeah, but minitel wasn’t about computer hard/software,
it was about retail in general and quite a bit else as well.

It was in fact an electronic phone book so it wouldn’t
be surprising if it had personals ads and hookers etc.

> I knew they were host addresses of some sort
> and wondered what kind of network protocol was
> being used since it didn't look like a DECnet format.

> It takes years to adapt and adopt a standard. I'm assuming those
> addresses were the first trickles of people trying to move on-line.

They were in the sense of electronic communication,
but not in the sense of the www we were discussing.

Same with Compuserve which had been around
for quite a while before the www showed up too.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306885 is a reply to message #306800] Sun, 27 December 2015 00:07 Go to previous messageGo to next message
hancock4 is currently offline  hancock4
Messages: 6746
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
On Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 7:07:28 PM UTC-5, JimP wrote:

> I remember it now, America Online. AOL came later on.

Let's not forget Prodigy for ordinary consumers and Compuserve for
more serious users.

FWIW, AOL still exists. It offers free email.

I remember Prodigy touting that it had magazine articles, such as
from Consumers Reports. They did, but the articles were heavilly
abridged, so at that point in time it was still better to read
hardcopy. Also, Prodigy was loaded with grapics, but many users
had only 1200 or 2400 modems on an 8086 and grapics are very
slow at that speed. I don't think Prodigy was too successful.

Compuserve (or was it CompuServe?) worked a lot more efficiently
since it utilized the plain TTY character mode. For serious
users, it had a downloadables and discussion groups, such as
for specialty computer languages (my friends were into that.)

I'm not sure how much Compuserve was used for socializing since
it did have a connect charge that could add up if one wasn't careful.

I found it interesting that Compuserve had a tie-in to the past--
one could access Western Union through it. I don't know if you
could send a traditional telegram, but you could send a Mailgram.
Ironically, it would be the public e-mail offered by Compuserve
and other services that helped kill off Mailgram (and Mailgram was
WU's hope for the future.)

Compuserve had many services, some free, some extra charge. However,
personally, I didn't make much of use of it. At that time, I didn't
know anyone distant who also had a Compuserve so I could have faster
correspondence; I kept in touch with distant relatives by quick phone
calls or traditional letter. In contrast, today everyone I know has
an e-mail account and uses it.
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306887 is a reply to message #306885] Sun, 27 December 2015 03:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charles Richmond is currently offline  Charles Richmond
Messages: 2754
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote in message
news:64f85661-a267-42b4-a352-fa67edb402bf@googlegroups.com...
> On Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 7:07:28 PM UTC-5, JimP wrote:
>
> [snip...] [snip...]
> [snip...]
>
> Compuserve had many services, some free, some extra charge. However,
> personally, I didn't make much of use of it. At that time, I didn't
> know anyone distant who also had a Compuserve so I could have faster
> correspondence; I kept in touch with distant relatives by quick phone
> calls or traditional letter. In contrast, today everyone I know has
> an e-mail account and uses it.
>

ISTM that CompuServe and The Source both ran their systems on PDP-10's or
PDP-10 clones.

--

numerist at aquaporin4 dot com
Re: 25 Years: How the Web began [message #306889 is a reply to message #306885] Sun, 27 December 2015 05:07 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
mausg is currently offline  mausg
Messages: 2483
Registered: May 2013
Karma: 0
Senior Member
On 2015-12-27, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 7:07:28 PM UTC-5, JimP wrote:
>
>> I remember it now, America Online. AOL came later on.
>
> Let's not forget Prodigy for ordinary consumers and Compuserve for
> more serious users.
>
> FWIW, AOL still exists. It offers free email.

I hope so, a relative works for it. It has a market niche.

>
> I remember Prodigy touting that it had magazine articles, such as
> from Consumers Reports. They did, but the articles were heavilly
> abridged, so at that point in time it was still better to read
> hardcopy. Also, Prodigy was loaded with grapics, but many users
> had only 1200 or 2400 modems on an 8086 and grapics are very
> slow at that speed. I don't think Prodigy was too successful.
>
> Compuserve (or was it CompuServe?) worked a lot more efficiently
> since it utilized the plain TTY character mode. For serious
> users, it had a downloadables and discussion groups, such as
> for specialty computer languages (my friends were into that.)
>
> I'm not sure how much Compuserve was used for socializing since
> it did have a connect charge that could add up if one wasn't careful.

My memory of Compuserve was that software uploaded to it became
Compuserve's property, which was a suprise.

>
> I found it interesting that Compuserve had a tie-in to the past--
> one could access Western Union through it. I don't know if you
> could send a traditional telegram, but you could send a Mailgram.
> Ironically, it would be the public e-mail offered by Compuserve
> and other services that helped kill off Mailgram (and Mailgram was
> WU's hope for the future.)
>
> Compuserve had many services, some free, some extra charge. However,
> personally, I didn't make much of use of it. At that time, I didn't
> know anyone distant who also had a Compuserve so I could have faster
> correspondence; I kept in touch with distant relatives by quick phone
> calls or traditional letter. In contrast, today everyone I know has
> an e-mail account and uses it.
>

I have gone back to letter-writing, one has time to consider what one
types, and a lot of my generation still do not `do' computers. that is
letters printed out, my handwriting has become so bad, (I can edit over
my typing problems with `doublelettering').


--
greymaus
.
.
....
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