August 6th, 2011 marked the 20th anniversary of an event that changed the world.

It was on that date in 1991 that Tim Berners-Lee took to the Usenet alt.hypertext newsgroup to announce plans for the World Wide Web.

Now the Internet itself dates back to the 1950′s and ’60s.  With the TCP/IP protocol being standardized in 1982.

And Usenet, which also uses the Internet, came into existence in 1979.

But it wasn’t until August of 1991 that Berners-Lee laid out the plan for a web of documents or pages connected with links.  And the “Internet” that most people know was born.

1st Pic Ever Uploaded to the Internet in 1992

Obviously, this was nothing short of a revolution.  A revolution that has taken us from “You’ve Got Mail” to Facebook.

At the time the World Wide Web was announced, Usenet was already a thriving international community with discussions on every topic imaginable.

And so it was appropriate that Berners-Lee took to Usenet to announce the World Wide Web.  Much the same way that companies like Mozilla continue to announce their plans on Usenet today.

Now, 20 years can go by in a flash.  But like a fine wine, Usenet and the World Wide Web both continue to get better with age.

Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web!  Here’s to another 20 years.  One can only imagine what the web will look like in 2031!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 10:28 am and is filed under Tech, Usenet, Usenet History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.