4 ms·

Hey HN: I'm making a website to highlight the web's glorious past(I need help)

6 points by Nib 12y ago

After a lot of brainstorming (for ideas), a friend of mine ran into me and started talking. While he was talking, he also told me how Yahoo was intuit ally called Jerry Guide To The Web which as a matter of fact, I didn't know (I'm just 13, what did you expect ?). Now, it struck me that we need a concise and beautiful website to tell you about the history of the web, only the important things, no need for little stuff, as long text will make people go TL;DR(they won't find it interesting enough to read the whole thing). So, can you guys help me with the history of the internet ? Just give me a short list of the events you think are important and need to make it to the website. Post stuff in the form of "YYYY - EVENT" and maybe a little about it. EDIT: Here's my list: 1. 1945 - Vannevar Bush predicts a system like the Web 2. 1989 - The Internet is born 3. 1991 - The Internet is released to the public 4. 1993 - Mosaic Browser released 5. 1994 - Yahoo is founded by Jerry Yang as "Jerry's guide to the World Wide Web" 6. 1998 - Google, the largest website on the internet, was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin 7. 2004 - Facebook, The Social Network is made by Mark Zuckerberg. (More Coming)

drKarl 12y ago
What about Wikipedia?
- Nib 12y ago
  Ya, that's there to find about the stuff, but Wikipedia doesn't really know what has mattered to the World, it's only an encyclopedia! That's why I'm asking the PEOPLE(HN Community) to tell me what they think is/was important to the globe...
asaddhamani 12y ago
It only goes back to 2009, but this could be used as a starting point I guess? http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.alexa.com/topsites http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.alexa.com/topsites Of course the Wayback Machine could be used to find what websites used to look like in a certain time period as well.
- Nib 12y ago
  Checked it out but mainly it's the general list of websites - Facebook, Google and others... Have added it to my THE LIST myself, but thanks really
gregpilling 12y ago
1969 Arpanet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET 1993 Mosaic Browser
welly 12y ago
1989 - the Internet is born? No, the web was born not the Internet. See ARPANET.
- Nib 12y ago
  Are you sure ? I think the ARPANET was made in 69, whereas the web(internet) was made in 89, and released to public in 1990... Sources: http://webfoundation.org/about/sir-tim-berners-lee/ http://webfoundation.org/about/sir-tim-berners-lee/
  - petercooper 12y ago
    This is quite a contentious topic, one of the best writeups is at http://www.circleid.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_controversy_over_the_internets_birthday_you_decide http://www.circleid.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_controver... I argue/am on the side of the "Internet" coming into existence in 1983 as that's when ARPANET switched to TCP/IP and therefore represented anything like what the Internet is today. The Web is not the Internet, however.
  - welly 12y ago
    Yep, pretty sure! As the poster below says, the web is not the internet.
mariusz79 12y ago
lookup things like Gopher, IRC, USENET, BBS
petercooper 12y ago
You might find the slides to a keynote I gave interesting as I basically did a slide by slide "year - event" type thing: https://speakerdeck.com/peterc/i-choo-choo-choose-the-web-a-history-of-the-web-and-javascript-1945-2012 https://speakerdeck.com/peterc/i-choo-choo-choose-the-web-a-... To pick some though: 1945 - Vannevar Bush publishes As We May Think, predicting a system like the Web 1965 - Term "hypertext" coined and Douglas Englebart demonstrates the "online system" 1983 - ARPANET moves to TCP/IP, the "Internet" is born 1983-84 - DNS is invented and deployed across the Internet 1985 - Generic top level domains introduced (.com, .net, etc) 1991 - The Web becomes publicly available 1992 - ViolaWWW Web browser released, and first Web server outside of Europe ... actually, just check out the slides as I'm repeating them ;-)
- Nib 12y ago
  Ok, these slides are really cool, though it took me a lot of time to scroll through them... But it really has nearly doubled the list I had! :)
  - petercooper 12y ago
    Sure, feel free to take anything you like, it's all just factual stuff (well, mostly ;-)). Good luck!
contingencies 12y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcs https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method
percept 12y ago
In terms of milestone events, you might look into things like the first viruses, the birth of e-commerce and the development of SSL, social media pre-Facebook, the first DotCom implosion, the advent of "Web 2.0," etc. (though precise dates for these may be debatable). Unfortunately I'm coming up empty when trying to remember more positive developments that had a broader impact and aren't narrowly commercial, and it may be that the nature of these is a more gradual process (and part of why we hear about "good news" less frequently).
blainsmith 12y ago
Neat repo to plot these dates on a timeline. https://github.com/cheeaun/life https://github.com/cheeaun/life
batbomb 12y ago
My boss is Tony Johnson. He helped with SLAC's first website (first website in the US, and also the first database driven website) and wrote MidasWWW. Among other things, he mentioned going to the first web conference (where he met everyone TBL, Marc Andreesen, etc...), attended by only 25 or so people, where they wrote out how HTML forms would work on a board. There's lots of information online about SLACs history in the web and some sparse information otherwise, but he'd be happy to answer questions about the early web too. You can also read through the WWW mailing lists, but I think some of what is there is incomplete.
davelnewton 12y ago
Can't leave off MySpace, for better or worse. It preceded Facebook and was arguably the first massive social website.

6 points by Nib 12y ago

drKarl 12y ago

What about Wikipedia?

Nib 12y ago
Ya, that's there to find about the stuff, but Wikipedia doesn't really know what has mattered to the World, it's only an encyclopedia! That's why I'm asking the PEOPLE(HN Community) to tell me what they think is/was important to the globe...

asaddhamani 12y ago

It only goes back to 2009, but this could be used as a starting point I guess? http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.alexa.com/topsites http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.alexa.com/topsites Of course the Wayback Machine could be used to find what websites used to look like in a certain time period as well.

Nib 12y ago
Checked it out but mainly it's the general list of websites - Facebook, Google and others... Have added it to my THE LIST myself, but thanks really

gregpilling 12y ago

1969 Arpanet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET 1993 Mosaic Browser

welly 12y ago

1989 - the Internet is born? No, the web was born not the Internet. See ARPANET.

Nib 12y ago
Are you sure ? I think the ARPANET was made in 69, whereas the web(internet) was made in 89, and released to public in 1990... Sources: http://webfoundation.org/about/sir-tim-berners-lee/ http://webfoundation.org/about/sir-tim-berners-lee/
- petercooper 12y ago
  This is quite a contentious topic, one of the best writeups is at http://www.circleid.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_controversy_over_the_internets_birthday_you_decide http://www.circleid.com/posts/a_closer_look_at_the_controver... I argue/am on the side of the "Internet" coming into existence in 1983 as that's when ARPANET switched to TCP/IP and therefore represented anything like what the Internet is today. The Web is not the Internet, however.
- welly 12y ago
  Yep, pretty sure! As the poster below says, the web is not the internet.

mariusz79 12y ago

lookup things like Gopher, IRC, USENET, BBS

petercooper 12y ago

You might find the slides to a keynote I gave interesting as I basically did a slide by slide "year - event" type thing: https://speakerdeck.com/peterc/i-choo-choo-choose-the-web-a-history-of-the-web-and-javascript-1945-2012 https://speakerdeck.com/peterc/i-choo-choo-choose-the-web-a-... To pick some though: 1945 - Vannevar Bush publishes As We May Think, predicting a system like the Web 1965 - Term "hypertext" coined and Douglas Englebart demonstrates the "online system" 1983 - ARPANET moves to TCP/IP, the "Internet" is born 1983-84 - DNS is invented and deployed across the Internet 1985 - Generic top level domains introduced (.com, .net, etc) 1991 - The Web becomes publicly available 1992 - ViolaWWW Web browser released, and first Web server outside of Europe ... actually, just check out the slides as I'm repeating them ;-)

Nib 12y ago
Ok, these slides are really cool, though it took me a lot of time to scroll through them... But it really has nearly doubled the list I had! :)
- petercooper 12y ago
  Sure, feel free to take anything you like, it's all just factual stuff (well, mostly ;-)). Good luck!

contingencies 12y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcs https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfcs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method

percept 12y ago

In terms of milestone events, you might look into things like the first viruses, the birth of e-commerce and the development of SSL, social media pre-Facebook, the first DotCom implosion, the advent of "Web 2.0," etc. (though precise dates for these may be debatable). Unfortunately I'm coming up empty when trying to remember more positive developments that had a broader impact and aren't narrowly commercial, and it may be that the nature of these is a more gradual process (and part of why we hear about "good news" less frequently).

blainsmith 12y ago

Neat repo to plot these dates on a timeline. https://github.com/cheeaun/life https://github.com/cheeaun/life

batbomb 12y ago

My boss is Tony Johnson. He helped with SLAC's first website (first website in the US, and also the first database driven website) and wrote MidasWWW. Among other things, he mentioned going to the first web conference (where he met everyone TBL, Marc Andreesen, etc...), attended by only 25 or so people, where they wrote out how HTML forms would work on a board. There's lots of information online about SLACs history in the web and some sparse information otherwise, but he'd be happy to answer questions about the early web too. You can also read through the WWW mailing lists, but I think some of what is there is incomplete.

davelnewton 12y ago

Can't leave off MySpace, for better or worse. It preceded Facebook and was arguably the first massive social website.