The Web Superhighway


What Is It? History Statistics Links Builders Digital Halloween Map


What Is It?

The Internet is a network of computers transferring data along communication lines.

History

The Internet was started in the late 1960's as a response to the Cold War - a defense research network and fail-safe communications system in case of a national emergency. It originally connected four universities: University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Center, University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The Internet today consists of over 10,000 different computer services and network operated by governments, corporations, and non-profits.

The World Wide Web did not come into existence until the early 1990's. Tim Berners-Lee, working at the CERN in Switzerland, wanted to find a way to link several of his research projects together. His willingness to share his "hyperlink" ideas with others led the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) to utilize his ideas in creating Mosaic, the first graphical browser.

Marc Andreesen, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, saw commercial potential for graphical browsers. Upon graduation, Marc teamed up with Jim Clark to create Netscape. After several years of watching Netscape's increasing success, Microsoft created Internet Explorer.

What is the Internet composed of?

Statistics

a new web site added every 4 seconds
web traffic doubles every 100 day
over 300 million users

Created by Wanda Greenlee
© Sept. 2001