World Wide Web – Unknown Facts

The seeds for the first idea of what the World Wide Web (WWW) was, was introduced to the world 30 years ago on a NeXT computer on 12th March, 1989 by Tim Berners Lee as an experiment. At the time, the bare threads of an idea were floating around somewhere in cyberspace and through the next three decades, they started being tied together to create a massive network! With only a bare whiteboard and a few dashes of hypermedia splattered across the surface, the World Wide Web has vastly progressed over the last few years. As the World Wide Web turns 30 today, here is taking a look at some truly fascinating facts about it!

1. The Internet and the WWW are two different things

Picture credits: 123rf.com

Unlike common belief, the World Wide Web and the internet are two extremely separate entities. While the WWW is a collection of text pages, files, digital photographs and animations, the internet is a networking infrastructure which connects billions of computers all over the world! The two are interlinked in the sense that the World Wide Web is a part of the internet. Through the years, both the internet and the WWW have grown to accommodate one another to facilitate an easy mode of communication transfer.

2. What’s in a name?

Picture credits: computerweekly.com

The World Wide Web was not the first name Tim Berners Lee thought for his pet project. Initially, he wanted to name the WWW as Information Mesh, Mine of Information or Information Mine. Thankfully, good sense prevailed and the name World Wide Web was picked as the final standing!

3. The first ever picture posted online

Picture credits: telegraph.co.uk

While most people would have thought the first picture to be posted on the World Wide Web would have been an informative post, think again. The first ever digital picture to be posted on the World Wide Web starred an all girls band! Called Les Horribles Cernettes, the band was an all girls physics themed rock band and was founded in the year 1990. While the World Wide Web lived on to become indispensable, the band broke up in 2012.  

4. Americans make the most of the Web

Picture credits: attsavings.com

While over 2.4 billion people surf the internet on a daily basis, users based out of the United States account for 78.6 % of the global web usage. Did you know that even though the World Wide Web has been around for 30 years now, as of 2014, 24 nations around the world were still offline?

5. The first ever email

Picture credits: rvcj.com

While the Web was active and running for a while, emails weren’t sent for almost ten years after the launch of the web. The first ever email was sent only in the year 1971. Written by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, the first mail was sent with the words with “QWERTYUIOP.” Ray didn’t send the mail to other people, but first sent it to the computer next to him, to test the authenticity! The mail traveled through ARPANET, a series of networks which was popular before the internet.

Through the last thirty years, the World Wide Web has grown to include a lot of domains. If you think there are any other facts which we did not mention about the World Wide Web, comment and let us know!