T171 End of Course Assessment
Lois Ann Morris PI: T8318286 5th October 2001.
Significant Technology from Module 3 - The World Wide Web.
Firstly, his specific purpose was simple - he had a poor memory and needed a means of organising all the disparate pieces of information in his working and personal life. He wrote such a program for his own use in 1980 and called it “ENQUIRE”. Arriving at CERN in Geneva in the late 1980s, charged with the task of facilitating retrieval and handling of information for the Laboratory’s physicists, he realised that this was the same problem only on a much larger scale. He proposed a solution in March 1989. He based his proposal on the already proven client-server system and suggested two complementary software functions. One was a ‘browser’ program, running on the client computer. This was responsible for locating and fetching the information requested and displaying it on a monitor screen. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Opera are popular browsers. The other was a ‘server’ program running on the server computer, responding to requests, locating files and despatching them. Apache is a well known server program.
(Above) Image of Tim Berners-Lee courtesy of the University of Strathclyde Homepages of Staff and Students.
Berners-Lee also had to create a set of protocols defining the rules by which different machines could talk to one another and exchange information. First, he took the already existing technology of SGML (Standard Generalised Markup Language) used in the electronic publishing business to define how a document was to be laid out. From SGML, he developed HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) a document format defining how online pages are displayed by a browser. Second, he devised the URL (Uniform Resource Locator - also known as URI, Uniform Resource Identifier) as a means of specifying the location of any file or web page on the Internet. Thirdly, he created HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) to specify the rules for the actual physical exchange of information between machines using browsers and servers. The Web is a combination of technologies. Hardware infrastructure is provided by server and client computers networked together into LANs (Local Area Networks) or WANs (Wide Area Networks) and linked by highspeed continental and intercontinental communication channels. Software infrastructure is provided by the set of protocols that govern the day-to-day operations of this world-wide ‘network of networks’ together with the server and browser software that deals with the location, exchange and displaying of information. The Web has had a huge impact on the world both in the spheres of business and of leisure. Companies of all kinds have moved online in huge numbers to conduct business with their customers and each other. A whole Web culture has developed, allowing people to communicate across international boundaries as never before. It is astonishing to think that the Web is essentially the concept of one man - Tim Berners-Lee. Along with Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson, and Bill Atkinson, he is one of a long line of visionaries who saw the almost infinite possibilities inherent in computers for communication and exchange of information.
LINKS
The World Wide Web Consortium Home Page
"Leading the Web to its Full Potential..."
CERN Home Page
Screenshot of Tim Berners-Lee's original Browser labelled
Network Working Group
Network Working Group |
