August 6, 1991 can be considered the second birthday of the Internet. On this day, Tim Berners-Lee launched the world's first website on the world's first web server, accessible at . The resource defined the concept of the "World Wide Web", contained instructions for installing a web server, using a browser, etc. This site was also the world's first Internet directory because Tim Berners-Lee later hosted and maintained a list of links to other sites there. It was a momentous beginning that made the internet what we know it to be.
We see no reason not to have a drink or remember other first events in the world of the Internet. True, the article was written and proofread with a chill: it’s scary to realize that some colleagues are younger than the first site and even the first messenger, and you yourself remember a good half of this as part of your biography. Hey, the time when we had time to grow up?
Tim Berners-Lee and his the world's first website
Let's start with Habr
It is logical to assume that the first post on Habré should have ID=1 and look like this: . But this link contains a note by the founder of Habr Denis Kryuchkov about the creation of a Wiki-FAQ for Habrahabr (do you remember that once the name of Habr was longer?), Which does not pull on the first welcome post.
This is what Habr looked like in 2006
It turns out that this publication was actually not the very first one (Habr itself was launched on May 26, 2006) - we managed to find a publication already from ... January 16, 2006! . At this point, we already wanted to call Sherlock Holmes to unravel this tangle (well, the one on the logo). But we, perhaps, will call on the help of a more experienced habrassychik. How do you like that ?
And this is how the first corporate blogs on Habré looked like.
By the way, you can leave comments in both posts and no one has written there yet from 2020 (and this year is definitely worth witnessing).
First social network
The first social network in the world is Odnoklassniki. But do not rush to be proud of this fact or be surprised by it: we are talking about the American network Classmates, which appeared in 1995 and was the same thing that you thought of in the first sentence of the paragraph. At the start, the user selects the state, school, year of graduation, and after registration, he is immersed in the special atmosphere of such a social network. By the way, the site has undergone a redesign and exists now - moreover, it is still very popular.
Oh that orange!
But the web archive remembers everything - this is exactly what the site interface was like at the beginning of its existence.
In Russia, the first social network appeared in 2001 - this is E-Xecutive, a popular and still active network of professionals (by the way, there are a lot of sensible materials and communities there). But "Odnoklassniki" of domestic bottling appeared only in 2006.
First web browser
The first browser appeared in 1990. The author and developer of the browser was the same Tim Berners-Lee, who called his application ... World Wide Web. But the name was long, difficult to remember and inconvenient, so the browser was soon renamed and became known as Nexus. But the universal “favorite” Internet Explorer from Microsoft was not even the third browser in the world, Netscape wedged between it and Nexus, it is also Mosaic and it is also the predecessor of the famous Netscape Navigator, Erwise, Midas, Samba, etc. But it was IE that became the first browser in the modern sense, Nexus performed much narrower functions: it helped to view small documents and files on a remote computer (although this is the essence of all browsers, because, as linkusoids say, everything is a file). By the way, it was in this browser that the first site was opened.
Nexus Interface
And again the creator with creation
Erwise is the world's first browser with a graphical interface and the ability to search by text on a page.
First online store
The emergence of the Internet as a set of interconnected computers could not leave business indifferent, because it opened up new opportunities for earning money and entering the trade zone that was almost unregulated at that time (we are talking about 1990 and later, before that, on the contrary, the Internet was practically a super secret sphere). In 1992, airlines were the first to enter online trading territory, selling tickets "online".
The first online store sold books, and at this place you probably already guessed who its creator was? Yes, Jeff Bezos. And if you think that Mr. Bezos loved books and dreamed of making the world educated and in love with reading, then you are mistaken. The second product was toys. Both books and toys are popular goods, which are also convenient to store, sort and which do not have an expiration date and do not require especially reverent storage conditions. And it’s also convenient to pack books and toys and you shouldn’t worry about fragility, completeness, etc. Amazon's birthday is July 5, 1994
The time machine remembers Amazon only from the very end of 1998. DVD, Motorola - where are my 17 years?
In Russia, the first online store was launched on August 30, 1996, and it was also the books.ru bookstore (I hope you know that it is alive and well now). But it seems to us that in Russia it was also bookish by the call of the soul, yet books in our country are a commodity with, perhaps, eternal popularity.
Books.ru in 1998
First messenger
In order to avoid fights in the comments, I will make a reservation that we are not talking about messaging systems with limited access, but about those instant messengers that became available precisely in the era of the “universal” Internet. Therefore, the history of the messenger begins in 1996, when the Israeli company Mirabilis launched ICQ. It had multi-user chats, and support for file transfer, and user search, and much more.
One of the first versions of ICQ. We took the picture on Habré and immediately recommend
First IP telephony
The beginning of IP telephony was laid in 1993-1994. Charley Kline created Maven, the first PC program that could transmit voice over a network. Around the same time, CU-SeeMe, a video conferencing program developed at Cornell University for Macintosh PCs, gained popularity. Both of these applications have gained literally space popularity - with their help, the flight of the space shuttle Endeavor was broadcast on Earth. Maven was transmitting sound, and CU-SeeMe was transmitting an image. After a while, the programs were merged.
CU-SeeMe interface. Source: ludvigsen.hiof.no
First video on YouTube
YouTube was officially launched on February 14, 2005, and the first video was uploaded on April 23, 2005. The video with his participation was posted on the site by one of the creators of YouTube - Javed Karim (filmed by his school friend Yakov Lapitsky). The video lasts 18 seconds and is called "Me at the zoo" ("I'm at the zoo"). He did not know yet about which zoo would start on this service, oh, he did not know.
By the way, this is the only surviving video from the “test”, the very first ones. I will not retell the plot, see for yourself:
First meme
The first Internet meme infected the souls and brains of hundreds of thousands of users in 1996. It was launched by two graphic designers - Michael Girard and Robert Lurie. The video showed a toddler dancing to the track Hooked on a Feeling by singer Mark James. The creators sent the "sticky video" to other companies, and then it was sent by e-mail to a huge number of users. I probably don't know anything about memes, but he looks a little scary.
By the way, this video was actually an advertisement - it demonstrated the new features of the Autodesk program. The movements of the “baby Uga-chaga” began to be repeated all over the world (although they could not upload it to YouTube then). The meme is clearly a success.
And you know what we think. Could we then, as children and teenagers, assume that fate would unite us in one company RUVDS, through whose servers about 0,05% of the Runet goes. And we are responsible for every byte of this colossal amount of information. No, friends, this is not fantasy - this is life, which was laid down by the hands of the First.
The article contains far from all the "first artifacts" of the Internet. Tell us, what was the first thing you heard about on the Web? Let's get nostalgic, shall we?
Source: habr.com