24 August 20

Happy Birthday, public World Wide Web! On 23 August (yesterday) 1991, (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee released the first "browser" for the World Wide Web. This was a program that allowed users to retrieve files over the newly expanding "Internet," using links called Uniform Resource Locators. At first, users had to know which URL would give them the starting point for their "surfing," but soon there were search tools like "Archie" and then "Veronica" to help us find Web sites more efficiently. The first graphical browser (displaying images and decorated pages) came out in 1993. Everything you do today with Chrome or Firefox or Safari or (ugh, arggh!) Edge depends on what Berners-Lee did in 1991.