The History of the Web

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Before the Wars, Browsers Were Everywhere

Published: April 21, 2020

Before browsers were truly cross-platform, there was a time when each operating system had their browser of choice, and it was tailored to the needs of those users.

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The Origin of the IMG Tag

Published: March 7, 2017

Why is it the <img> tag instead of the <image> tag? The answer, it turns out, dates back to one of the web’s earliest browsers and one of the web’s earliest discussions.

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What Happens When You Enter a URL In Your Browser of Choice

Published: April 15, 2019

There’s this scene in the second season of The Crown (if you watch enough old movies, you’ll see the same kind […]

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The First Website in the United States Was Made for Physicists

Published: January 21, 2020

Tim Berners-Lee has said, on multiple occasions, the the first website in the US was one of the major reasons the web took off. But what did it do and why was it so important?

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A Brief History of Hypertext

Published: February 20, 2017

Without hypertext, there would be no World Wide Web. But its name and conception predate the web’s creation by decades.

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The Importance of Being on Usenet

Published: July 17, 2017

Ever wondered how people found about the web. The first transmission of its existence was a digital one, a Usenet post that sparked a following of early web pioneers.

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What the Web Could Have Been

Published: April 18, 2017

Before the web, Gopher offered a way to connect to the Internet and share documents. And if things had gone a little differently, it might even be what we use to surf information today.

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The Web’s First (And Second) Browser

Published: September 25, 2017

The web’s first browser featured full color, read/write capabilities, and multiple windows. The second browser was a text-only command line tool. Guess which one people actually used?

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Why Do We Call it a Homepage?

Published: December 1, 2020

The word homepage came into popular use in the mid to late 90’s, but it’s origin dates back to the web’s beginning.

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The History of the Web is a project by Jay Hoffmann. Get in touch.