How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web (Popular Science) [Paperback]

Today the Web is pervasive, and it is hard to believe that as recently as 1990 it was merely a small project at CERN (Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire). This book tells the story. It starts in the sixties, when Paul Baran in California and Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington independently came up with the idea of packet switching--part of the technology that makes the Internet possible. Then there was ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), set up by the US Department of Defence, and ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet, and in 1983 the beginning of the Internet itself.

Having the network is one thing, but for millions of people it is the Web that makes it useful. On 23 June 1980 Tim Berners-Lee joined CERN, and the authors describe how his work and ideas evolved until in 1989 he made a proposal for hyperlinked documents, on which his boss Mike Sendall scribbled the words "vague but exciting".

Written by two senior members of CERN, How the Web Was Born is a readable and carefully-researched account of the Web's earliest years. It is an international story, but while there is plenty of coverage of development around the world, this book is particularly valuable thanks to its European perspective. Technical terms are explained, and the general reader will be grateful for the appendices which include a timeline, list of key individuals, bibliography, explanation of acronyms, and of course an index. The Web is young and it is too soon for a definitive history, but this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in how it all started. Read it alongside Weaving the Web, by Tim Berners-Lee himself. --Tim Anderson

In 1994 a computer program called the Mosaic browser transformed the Internet from an academic tool into a telecommunications revolution. Now a household name, the World Wide Web is part of the modern communications landscape with tens of thousands of servers providing information to millions of users. Few people, however, realize that the Web was born at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, and that it was invented by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee. This new book, published in the Popular Science list in Oxford Paperbacks, tells how the idea for the Web came about at CERN, how it was developed, and how it was eventually handed over for free for the rest of the world to use. This is the first book-length account of the Web's development and it includes interview material with the key players in the story.

Robert Cailliau is Head of the Web office at C.E.R.N. . James Gillies is a professional science writer at C.E.R.N.