- Image by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr
The first internet browser was released in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee, and was called WorldWideWeb. By the way, this is also the same guy who created the first web page. Not to be confused with the World Wide Web, it later changed its name to Nexus. Prior to the WorldWideWeb browser, there was no way to view the Web.
Working on a NeXT computer at CERN during the end of 1990, Tim Berners-Lee created the first internet browser called WorldWideWeb. The first program was completed after only 2 months of development. Several updates were made prior to its release to the public in the summer of 1991. The project team, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Bernard Pollermann, Nicola Pellow, and Jean-Francios Groff, created passive browsers that did not posses editing prospects because it was too difficult to port. Nobody on the team had experience with Windows X, so it was not possible to use the browser with that operating system.
Later, some of the team members changed most of the programming for WorldWideWeb to the C programming language and created the libwww application programming interface (API). Shortly after, new browsers started to appear, such as ViolaWWW, which was used on UNIX and the X Windowing System. This was the first well known web browser prior to Mosaic, although the computer audience was limited at this point in time. Mosaic became the most popular browser in 1993 replacing the WorldWideWeb. This was the browser that opened the door for common people to access the Web because it was easy to understand, reliable, simple to install, and was the first browser to be able to display images inline with text instead of in a separate window.
Some of the original code for the WorldWideWeb browser is on Mr. Berners-Lee’s computer in a museum at CERN. It is said that the code can not be recovered because of the computer’s historical artifact status. In the spring of 1993, CERN released the source code for WorldWideWeb and made it free software. There are several versions of this software still available for download, free of charge.
