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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1105307 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .91 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

From Amazon.com
It's hard to believe that there was a time--not long ago--when the digital fairyland of commerce, soapboxing, and pornography called the World Wide Web was just a file-sharing tool for nerds, but there's a first time for everything. How the Web Was Born, by CERN's James Gillies and Robert Cailliau, follows the trail from the dawn of ARPANet through the mid-90s, just as the Web boom was beginning to take off in earnest. That may seem like an odd ending point, but the post-1995 story has already been told ad nauseam, and the writers know how to quit while they're ahead. The story is told from widely varying viewpoints and across shifting timelines as the various players are introduced and observed; this adds some complexity to the narrative, but yields a truer picture of the team efforts required to devise and launch the Web. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee (of course), and many more, figure prominently in the interwoven tales, and are briefly summarized in an abridged cast list at the end of the book, along with a paper and electronic bibliography. The book assumes some knowledge and interest on the part of the reader and saves its big-picture context for the end, but provides reader motivation both by its subject's inherent interest and the recurrent personalization of the story. Neither textbook nor CERN propaganda, How the Web Was Born offers an engagingly networked collection of characters that, like their invention, creates something larger than the sum of its parts. --Rob Lightner

Review
`This is a scholarly work for the price of a novel' Gareth Price

`It is not a light read but it is a good one!' David Coleman, Multimedia Information and Technology, February 2001

`excellent book' New Scientist 30/9/00

`a good read' Glasgow Herald, 22/9/00

Book Info
The history of the World Wide Web, from its genesis at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, where it was invented by Englishman Tim Berners-Lee. Tells how the idea for the Web came about, how it was developed, and how it was handed over for the world to use.