📘 Chapter 2: History of HTML
🌐 The Birth of the World Wide Web
Before HTML and web browsers became common, the Gopher protocol was widely used in the early 1990s to access and share documents on the internet. Developed by the University of Minnesota, Gopher could only display plain text and links, and it allowed users to navigate documents across multiple servers.
This was especially useful for universities, where departments could centralize large documents on one computer and access them from others. However, in 1993, the University of Minnesota announced it would start charging licensing fees for Gopher. This led researchers and developers to look for open alternatives.
👨🔬 Tim Berners-Lee and the Creation of HTML
At CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland, a British scientist named Tim Berners-Lee was working on a better way to manage and share information.
He proposed a system where documents could be interlinked using hypertext — a concept where text contains links to other documents.
In 1991, he released:
- The first web server (info.cern.ch)
- The first web browser and editor (called WorldWideWeb, later renamed Nexus)
- The first version of HTML
This marked the beginning of the World Wide Web.
🚀 HTML Goes Public
In 1993, CERN released the World Wide Web software into the public domain, allowing anyone to use and improve it freely. This decision led to rapid development of the web.
🧩 Rise of Mosaic Browser
Around the same time, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) developed a new web browser called Mosaic, which supported:
- Text
- Images
- Hyperlinks
Initially available for Unix, it was later released for Windows and Macintosh in late 1993. Mosaic became the first popular web browser, and it played a key role in popularizing the web.
⚔️ The Browser Wars
In 1994, Mosaic’s co-creator Marc Andreessen co-founded Netscape Communications and launched Netscape Navigator, a fast and powerful web browser.
Meanwhile, Microsoft entered the competition by licensing Mosaic from Spyglass Inc. and releasing Internet Explorer 1.0 in 1995.
This kicked off the famous “Browser Wars” between Netscape and Microsoft, where both companies rapidly added new features to win market share. This era also saw inconsistent implementations of HTML standards across browsers.
🌍 Formation of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
To bring order and standardization, Tim Berners-Lee founded the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) in 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with support from CERN and other organizations.
The goal of W3C was to:
- Standardize web technologies like HTML, CSS, and XML
- Ensure web content works universally across all browsers and devices
- Promote an open and accessible web
The W3C does not enforce its standards, but it publishes recommendations that browser developers follow to ensure consistency.
🏁 Milestones in HTML Development
- 1991: First version of HTML by Tim Berners-Lee
- 1995: HTML 2.0 published by IETF (first formal specification)
- 1997-1999: W3C released HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.01
- 2014: HTML5 became the official standard, modernizing web development with audio, video, canvas, and mobile support
🧾 Summary
HTML’s history is closely tied to the growth of the internet itself. From a simple document-sharing system at CERN to a global standard maintained by W3C, HTML has evolved to become the foundation of the web as we know it today.
