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

by James Gillies (Author), Robert Cailliau (Author) "The World Wide Web is like an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a record collection, a video shop, and Speakers' Corner all rolled into one and..." (more)

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Product details

Paperback: 372 pages
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; illustrated edition edition (28 Sep 2000)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0192862073
ISBN-13: 978-0192862075
Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.6 cm

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 298,733 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Popular in these categories:

#32 in	Books > Children's Books > Education > A & AS Level > Engineering
#52 in	Books > Children's Books > Education > Subjects > Engineering
#71 in	Books > Computing & Internet > Computer Science > Information Systems > Information Retrieval

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

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

Product Description

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.

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First Sentence
The World Wide Web is like an encyclopaedia, a telephone directory, a record collection, a video shop, and Speakers' Corner all rolled into one and accessible through any computer. Read the first page

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5.0 out of 5 stars How the Web was Born, 25 April 2001

By	Roger W. Poultney (Bradford, West Yorkshire United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

The World Wide Web has seen an explosive period of growth over the past decade and its presence has become ever more pervasive and all embracing. While literally millions have now been exposed to the web (either through daily domestic or business usage - or simply through coverage of the dot com "boom and bust" economy in the traditional media), relatively few seem to know much about how it all came in to being. In this fascinating book, James Gillies (a science writer based at CERN - the European physics laboratory where the web was first developed) and Robert Cailliau (one of this exciting new medium's first proponents) describe in detail how it all came about - and how the vision of the web's original developer Tim Berners-Lee became reality in the shape of the fastest growing communications medium - possibly of all time.

Beginning with the development of the underlying communications infrastructure, the authors describe how what we now know as the Internet evolved from being a nuclear "bombproof" US military network in the late 1960s to becoming the "mother of all networks" so beloved of the academic research communities in the 1970s and 1980s. With these foundations thus laid, the book goes on to describe how the seemingly ambitiously named "World Wide Web" was built on top of the existing Internet in the early 1990s, and just how quickly the medium has since gained acceptance and widespread usage throughout the civilised world.

Probably the most significant achievement of "How the Web was Born" is the technical history is covered in a rigorous but yet lively fashion, with lots of human interest being included to give a background to the various different academic, military and commercial interests which led to the practical development of innovative new ideas in both computer hardware and software, as well as in telecommunications technology and the man - machine interface. As such, "How the Web was Born" has much to offer the casual reader, while not disappointing the more technically minded savant: In all, the authors have provided a most excellent and enjoyable read, whilst still maintaining an authority and attention to technical detail which could make this book a definitive history of the subject in years to come.

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