History to date

March 1989

First project proposal[1] written and circulated for comment (TBL)[2] . Paper "HyperText and CERN" (in ASCII[3] or WriteNow[4] format) produced as background.

October 1990

Project proposal[5] reformulated with encouragement from CN and ECP divisional management. RC[6] is co-author.

November 1990

Initial WorldWideWeb prototype developed on the NeXT (TBL)[7] .

November 1990

Nicola Pellow[8] joins and starts work on the line-mode browser . Bernd Pollermann[9] helps get interface to CERNVM "FIND" index running. TBL gives a colloquium[10] on hypertext in general.

Christmas 1990

Line mode and NeXTStep browsers demonstrable. Acces is possible to hypertext files, CERNVM "FIND", and internet news articles.

Febraury 1991

workplan[11] for the purposes of ECP division.

26 February 1991

Presentation[12] of the project to the ECP group.

March 1991

Line mode browser (www) released to limited audience on priam vax, rs6000, sun4.

May 1991

Workplan[13] produced for CN/AS group

17 May 1991

Presentation[14] to C5 committee. General release of www on central CERN machines.

12 June 1991

CERN Computer Seminar[15] on WWW.

August 1991

Files available on the net, posted on alt.hypertext (6, 16, 19th Aug), comp.sys.next (20th), comp.text.sgml and comp.mail.multi-media (22nd). Jean-Francois Groff[16] joins the project.

October 1991

VMS/HELP and WAIS gateways installed. Mailing lists www-interest (now www-announce) and www-talk@info.cern.ch started. One year status report. Anonymous telnet service started.

December 1991

Presented poster and demonstration at HT91[17] . W3 browser installed on VM/CMS. CERN computer newsletter[18] announces W3 to the HEP world.

15 January 1992

Line mode browser release 1.1 available by anonymous FTP. See news[19] . Presentation to AIHEP'92 at La Londe.

12 February 1992

Line mode v 1.2 annouced on alt.hypertext, comp.infosystems, comp.mail.multi-media, cern.sting, comp.archives.admin, and mailing lists.

May 1992

Presentation and demo[20] at JENC3[21] (Innsbruck). Carl Barker[22] joins the project.

June 1992

Presentation and demo at HEPVM (Lyon).

July 1992

Distribution of WWW through CernLib, including Viola. WWW library code ported to DECnet. Report to the Advisory Board on Computing.

August 1992

introduction of CVS[23] for code management.