3 ms·
Here's my personal story: I distinctly remember a professor showing me a web browser (not Gopher!) before I left for a second-semester and summer co-op, my Sop
by VikingCoder 15y ago
Here's my personal story:
I distinctly remember a professor showing me a web browser (not Gopher!) before I left for a second-semester and summer co-op, my Sophomore year in college (starting around January/February, and running until August). I graduated High School in May of 1991, so then I was a Freshman in college in August of 1991 (right around when this was posted.) I was a Sophomore in August of 1992, and it would have been right around December of 1992 when I saw the browser, if my memory is correct.
I've been trying to figure out if my memory is flawed... And if not, what browser he would have been using.
It couldn't have been NCSA Mosaic, because 0.1a wasn't out until June 1993:
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Windows/Archive/MosaicHistory.html
Or Netscape Navigator, because 0.9 wasn't out until 1994.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Release_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator#Release_hist...
So, December of 1992, probably not a NeXT (I don't think), certainly an X-Windows system. Probably a Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web
That leaves Erwise, ViolaWWW...
Or maybe my memory is flawed. Maybe I didn't see the graphical WWW browser until after I got back from my co-op, so some time around August of 1993. :(
If I remembered the professor's name, I could email him and ask!
I wonder how many people saw the WWW before me? If you look at how long people have been web browsing, what percentile am I in? 99.9%? 99.99%? 99.999%? How many nines, damnit! :)
Maybe it was a NeXT. I know my school later had NeXT boxes. That would certainly make my remembered timeline more plausible...
- juiceandjuice 15y agoMy boss wrote MidasWWW, a Motif/X based browser for Unix. It was out in November 1992. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MidasWWW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MidasWWW http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#browser http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html#browser > Where does Mosaic fit in? > A: As I understand it, Marc Andreessen at NCSA was shown ViolaWWW by a colleague (David Thompson?) at NCSA. Marc downloaded Midas and tried it out. He and Eric Bina then wrote their own browser for unix from scratch. Later, several other folks at NCSA joined the team to port the idea to Mac and PC. As they did, Tom Bruce at Cornell was writing "Cello" for the PC which came out neck-and-neck with Mosaic on the PC.