The Internet was started
in the late 1960's as a response to the Cold War - a defense research
network and fail-safe communications system in case of a national
emergency. It originally connected four universities: University
of California at Los Angeles, Stanford Research Center, University
of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The
Internet today consists of over 10,000 different computer services
and networks operated by governments, corporations, and non-profits.
The World Wide Web did
not come into existence until the early 1990's. Tim Berners-Lee,
working at the CERN in Switzerland, wanted to find a way to link
several of has research projects together. His willingness to
share his "hyperlink" ideas with others led the University
of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) to utilize his ideas in creating
Mosaic, the first graphical browser.
Marc Andreesen, a graduate
student at the University of Illinois, saw commercial potential
for graphical browser. Upon gradation, Marc teamed up with Jim
Clark to create Netscape. After several year of watching Netscape's
increasing success, Microsoft created Internet Explorer.
