The World Wide Web basically consists of a large series of documents, mostly in HTML. Which in turn can be accessed through browsers such as Chrome, Mozilla and others.

 

You may not even be used to the term World Wide Web - WWW - which means World Wide Web. But you have certainly used the system several times in your day to day life.

 

A very simple example is this article you are reading now, it is part of the great universal computer network. Along with other websites, blogs and online stores that you frequently visit.

 

In this article today we will talk about all its history, who was the inventor, when it appeared and also when it arrived here in Brazil. So stay with us until the end and learn everything about this very interesting subject.

Who was its inventor?

The great creator of the world wide web is the Tim BernersLee (British physicist and computer scientist), who at the time was working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). He, in turn, was trying to solve a communication problem between researchers and scientists from different parts of the world.

 

These scientists and researchers had a huge need to share data about their studies and experiences with other university and laboratory partners that were at universities far away.

 

Berners was quite disappointed with the many inefficiencies and also the difficulties of searching for information on different computers.

 

In research laboratories in Europe, many different types of computers were used. Different brands, totally different operating systems.

 

That ultimately they were completely unable to communicate with each other, so something urgently needed to be done to resolve this once and for all.

 

When did it appear?

So the solution for this arrived almost at the end of the 90s, but precisely on November 12, 1990. That's when Tim Berners Lee and his partner Robert Cailiau, who is also another computer scientist, both together developed the great World Wide Web project (WWW).

 

Which would come to be made up of a web of documents interconnected by hyperlinks that are viewed by browsers (browsers). That is, a very basic training that would be the internet as it is known today.

 

In the beginning, however, the web was not as complex as it is today, connected by hundreds of billions of machines. Just to give you an idea of its simplicity, the first server of this phase of the internet used the Workstation NexT Computer as its main base.

 

Which was where Mr. Berners Lee was working at the time, and she had only 8M of RAM and 256MB of physical hard disk space. But of course for that time, that was a very powerful computer for approximately $6,500 dollars, equivalent to a r$ 26,500.00 reais today.

 

But even so, it never came close to the power of the servers that emerged in the mid-1990s. Just to give you an idea, technology has advanced so much since then that today there are many services easily accessible from hosting websites of various types allowing ordinary people to do business on the web.

 

Know the difference between web and internet:

It is very important that you know that, especially nowadays, that the Web and the Internet are practically used as a synonym. However, when we are dealing with a big story, which is the world wide web, this in turn will end up resulting in anachronisms.

 

Therefore, we made an important distinction: the Internet emerged in the 70s, almost 10 years before the Web arrived. Its first experiments and tests in the field of packet switching began in the 1960s in the United States.

 

The first protocols to emerge were IP, VoIP, E-mail and Ftp, this in the 70's. As well as the advent of TCP/IP which appeared a little later in 1983.

 

Therefore, before the internet as it is known today, it appeared in the late 80s, and at that time there was already an entire organization of internet structure ready for the whole world.

 

Another issue that many people don't know is that it was located in just a few more developed countries. And they were used only by educational institutions or the military. And that allowed Tim Berners Lee to develop what we know today as the web or world wide web.

 

Web and its popularization:

Between 1992 and 1995, for approximately 3 years, the internet grew at a slow pace, remaining mainly in laboratories and educational institutions such as universities. But already at that time, the first webcomics (online comics) and also the first precursor browsers began to appear.

 

So it wasn't until 1996 that big companies felt the importance of having an online presence. And with that, in the following 3 consecutive years there was an explosion of commercial sites of the .com type.

 

And with that, companies began to show their products on static pages in a simple way with hypertext format. Not counting any kind of elegance and refinement like today. Finally, in 1999 the internet reached the general population for good, this was close to the turn of the millennium.

 

Those early years, until 2001, became known as the internet bubble. So that's when a huge number of startup-type companies began to emerge establishing their online presence. The internet bubble term used by many companies so far did not sustain itself over a long period of time, which finally ended up in bankruptcy.

 

Internet bubble: What happened next?

After the end of the internet bubble, there was, let's say, a cleanup on the web, as several sites ceased to exist. So, this facilitated telecommunication operators to operate with surplus capacity to offer their services.

 

But that was even good, causing rapid progress in speed of connections, reduction of broadband prices. And that helped a lot to popularize this medium for consumers.

 

And it was precisely during this period, in mid-2002, that Web 2.0, as it is known, emerged. The creation of blogs as well as RSS Feeds crucially and irreversibly changed the way the computer network worked.

 

So the way was opened for the emergence of the first social media such as Orkut, MySpace and Facebook. Which certainly made a tremendous success especially among young people.

 

Due to this, the most accessed contents were no longer produced by a media company, but by anyone. Like your work friends or even a well-known influencer in your area.

 

This and other factors allowed the web to become the more constant presence that it is today in the lives of thousands of people around the world. In the year 1990, only 2.6 million people were online. But that number increased to 412.8 million in the year 2000 and reached the first billion in the year 2005.

 

Today there are more than 3.9 billion peoples using the internet all over the planet. This represents practically more than half of the world's population. And that number is sure to only increase.

 

Internet arrives in Brazil:

The great first step for the internet to reach Brazil was in 1987, when a meeting took place at the University of São Paulo, USP. Representatives of the government and also of Embratel were present at this meeting, who together discussed the creation of the network that would make it possible to link Brazilian scientists with researchers from other countries.

 

The only and main objective of this meeting was to exchange information between these two groups (scientists and researchers). So the plan was put into practice in 1988, when the LNCC (Scientific Computing Laboratory) managed to make contact with the University of Maryland, in the USA.

 

And to achieve this, they used the Because It's Time Network (Bitnet) and thus managed to finally exchange messages with their peers on the other side of the continent.

 

And with that in the following years, approximately 3 years, many more scientists started using the internet here in Brazil. But even so, this was the maximum dimension of the internet here in Brazil.

 

In 1991, the computer network also began to be used by state governments and also by federal agencies in our country. And also in that year, the Brazilian internet began to be used to transfer files. And also to access national and intentional databases.

 

Beginning of commercial internet here in Brazil:

As in the rest of the world, Brazil's worldwide computer network emerged within universities. Also for the purpose of exchanging messages and information. But soon after, it gained space among government agencies and soon after for the population in general.

 

Now, let's say, a timeline of the Brazilian internet:

 

• 1989: TLD – Top .br domain was then reserved exclusively for Brazil by Jon Postel, director of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority's attribution chamber;
• 1994: Demi Gestchko, then superintendent of the IT department at Fapesp managed to reserve IP (Internet Protocol) blocks for Brazil;
• 1995: The first internet access providers appear, which enabled the commercial development of the service. And with that came news sites, companies and many others;
• 1996: In this year there were already 851 domains registered here in Brazil. Comparing with the current days, today there are 4 million registered .br domains;
• 2000: In this year, the first free access providers appeared. Whose these companies in turn provided dialers for users to connect over a telephone line.

 

It worked more or less like this: users paid 1 pulse for every 60 seconds of internet access, which corresponded to practically 1 minute talking on the landline. Free providers were financed through advertising, such as banners that appeared in users' browsers.

 

And also this year, broadband connections appeared, such as ADSL, which even allowed video transmission, but the cost at the time was a little high, but prices will soon fall.

 

• 2004- This year, social media such as MySpace, Orkut and Facebook arrived. That greatly modified the relationship of Brazilians with the internet;
• 2007: This year saw the greatest popularization of Facebook and a large commercialization of 3g smartphone models. That consolidated a definitive presence in the daily lives of Brazilians.

 

So from there it's a story that continues:

Smartphone devices were becoming more modern, faster and better. And with that, the internet was also becoming more advanced and cheaper as it is today.

 

And nowadays it is very common to see people sharing moments of their life in videos using the stories of another social network that is Instagram. Which came up right away.

 

Many unimaginable things, such as making video calls or watching series on Netflix while taking the subway or bus going to work, have become very common.

 

Conclusion:

What matters least is the way you call it, it can be web, internet, world wide web, anyway. In any case, it is already part of our lives, and will continue to be so.

 

Whether chatting through the WhatsApp App, or even watching videos and even learning from a tutorial on YouTube. Or by saving your files to Dropbox or Google Drive. You, us, your friends and family use it for many things in life.

 

So that's it, that's it, we've reached the end of this article, and you've learned much more about this great and important story. We hope you enjoyed it and even more ?

 

 

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? What is Database? Importance and Main Types.
? Know Who Invented the Telephone: History and Evolution.