'The Single Most Valuable Document In The History Of The World Wide Web'

[mickeyd]

Though I was quite alive 20 years ago, I do not recall this really historic occasion. Interesting NPR account of a not very well known event.

Twenty years ago this week, researchers renounced the right to patent the World Wide Web. Officials at CERN, the European research center where the Web was invented, wrote:

CERN relinquishes all intellectual property to this code, both source and binary form and permission is granted for anyone to use, duplicate, modify and redistribute it.

​

It's a dull sentence from a dull document. But that document marks the moment when the World Wide Web entered the public domain — a moment that was central to creating the Web as we know it today

'The Single Most Valuable Document In The History Of The World Wide Web' : Planet Money : NPR

 

[Jack_Pine]

And here I thought Al Gore invented the WEB...................

 

[timo2]

And here I thought Al Gore invented the WEB...................

Al Gore never said that. What he did was sponsor the "High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991" which provided funding and resources for the growth of the Internet. High Performance Computing Act of 1991 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[braumeister]

True. What he actually said was

"I took the initiative in creating the internet."

The line appears at 0:50 in this clip made in 1999.
Inventing the Internet - YouTube

 

[travelover]

And here I thought Al Gore invented the WEB...................

No, he invented Gortex.

 

[heeyy_joe]

Everyone knows that the internet will break soon because it is a series of tubes.

 

[timo2]

Everyone knows that the internet will break soon because it is a series of tubes.

The secret internet used by the Illuminati is the one without the tubes, and will be the only one left after ours breaks

 

[Tadpole]

I used to work with a guy who thought he had invented the Internet. Imagine his disappointment when I told him that I invented the Internet.

 

[Midpack]

Al Gore never said that. What he did was sponsor the "High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991" which provided funding and resources for the growth of the Internet.

Not that it matters, but he sorta asked for it with what he did say in braumeisters post above. Very poorly chosen words for a politician, very easily distorted by opponents, politics 101.

 

[Katsmeow]

Everyone knows that the internet will break soon because it is a series of tubes.

That's silly.

Everyone knows the internet is made of cats.

The Internet Is Made Of Cats - YouTube

 

[jon-nyc]

The secret internet used by the Illuminati is the one without the tubes, and will be the only one left after ours breaks

That's exactly what they want you to think.

 

[Bikerdude]

The Internet evolved from ARPANET and later NSFNET both government funded projects. These networks were first to use TCP/IP as a communication protocol which is still in use today. The WWW capability was added later.

ARPAnet - The First Internet

http://smithsonian.yahoo.com/arpanet2.html

 

[DFA]

I got to the end of the Internet; don't know if I want to start over:

The Last Page of the Internet - InternetLastPage.com

 

[nun]

The Internet evolved from ARPANET and later NSFNET both government funded projects. These networks were first to use TCP/IP as a communication protocol which is still in use today. The WWW capability was added later.

ARPAnet - The First Internet

http://smithsonian.yahoo.com/arpanet2.html

The internet was in existence long before what we know as the web. Back in the 70s and 80s scientists were using computer networks to send email and data. I used something called STARLINK back in 1983 in the UK to transfer files using KERMIT, but the idea of a webpage was way in the future.

CERN had the internet, but it was Berners-Lee and other CERN programmers that first proposed and implemented hypertext and a web browser.

If the internet is a road, then before the CERN folks it only had pedestrians on it, hypertext and web browsers was like giving everyone a car to drive.