The History of the Web
   ======================

Important Note: This has not been checked. This information could be
all lies. Use at your own risk.

PROLOGUE

1945: Vanevar Bush writes an article in Atlantic Monthly about a
      photo-electrical-meachnical device called a Memex, for MEMory
      EXtension, which could make and follow links between documents
      on microfiche.

1965: Ted Nelson coins the word "Hypertext".

19??: Hypermedias, hypertext, hyperdocuments: many ways of linking
      between documents are invented. For example, Hy-Time.

1986: SGML invented (ISO Standard 8879:1986)

1963: Doug Engelbart prototypes an "oNLine System" (NLS) which does
      hypertext browsing editing, email, and so on. He invents the
      mouse for this purpose. [3]

1980: While consulting for CERN June-December of 1980, Tim Berners-Lee
      writes a notebook program, "Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything",
      which allows links to be made betwen arbitrary nodes. Each node
      had a title, a type, and a list of bidirectional typed links.
      "ENQUIRE" run on Norsk Data machines under SINTRAN-III.


THE WEB

1989: Tim Berners-Lee proposes that CERN get some system to organise
      their info. [1]

1990: Early forms of HTML, HTTP invented by TBL. HTML designed to be
      structural, with semantics but no presentation. Stylesheets
      given as possible way of sprucing up documents. 

       "It is required that HTML be a common language between all
       platforms. This implies no device-specific markup, or anything
       which requires control over fonts or colors, for example. This
       is in keeping with the SGML ideal." [2]

      TBL releases first versions of his web browsers. [4]

      HTML retrospec'ed as an SGML application.

1992: Line Mode web browser (1.1, 1.2) released

1993: NCSA Mosaic takes the Internet by storm; WWW proliferates at a
      341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic.

      Mosaic's Marc Andreessen adds <img> tag in completely
      non-standard way (doesn't even follow SGML attribute syntax!).

      "Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): A Representation of Textual
      Information and MetaInformation for Retrieval and Interchange",
      07/23/1993, <draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt> is released.

      TBL's web browser for NeXT does inline images [5].

      April 30: Date on the declaration by CERN's directors that WWW
      technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being
      payable to CERN. A milestone document.

      Dave Ragget works on HTML+ (later abandoned).

1994: March: Marc Andreessen and colleagues leave NCSA and found
      Netscape.

      July: HTML 2.0 draft written by Berners-Lee, Connolly and
      Muldrow. Dan Connolly presents the draft at the Toronto IETF
      meeting, HTML working group formed.

      July: MIT/CERN agreement to start W3 Organisation is announced
      by Bangemann in Boston.

      October: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) founded 

      14 December: First W3 Consortium Meeting at M.I.T. in Cambridge
      (USA). 

1995: Netscape 1.0 browser released, implements FONT, CENTER, and
      other tags completely counter to the original idea of HTML.

      Web becomes rather popular.

      March: work on HTML3 starts.

      Yahoo started by David Filo and Robert Bina (Yahoo went on to be
      the first internet-only company to make a profit).

      Netscape 2 browser released, 

      HTML 2 released as IETF Proposed Standard, roughly corresponding
      to the capabilities of HTML in common use prior to June 1994.

1996: Microsoft realise Internet exists and within around a month
      release a web browser (Internet Explorer) based on Mosaic
      source.

      HTML3 dies due to lack of support from implementors.

      HTML 3.2 released which retrofitted the Netscape inventions into
      the HTML 'standard'. 

      Internet Explorer 2 released, virtually bug for bug compatible
      with Netscape (except for a few new bugs...).

1997: HTML4 released.

...
      CSS1
      
      CSS2

      XML
      
      Namespaces

      GIF fiasco

      XSchemas, XLink, SVG, CSS3


REFERENCES
[1] http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/HTMLConstraints.html
[3] http://www.bootstrap.org/dce-bio.htm
[4] http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/WorldWideWeb.html
[5] http://www.w3.org/History/1994/WWW/Journals/CACM/screensnap2_24c.gif
[6] http://www.w3.org/History.html

Others:
    http://info.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html
    http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/01birth.htm
    http://www.eff.org/pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/netguide.eff
    http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/callforhelp/answerstips/story/0,3650,2117335,00.html
    http://www.duke.edu/eng169s2/group2/Section_1D.html