How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web [Paperback]

James Gillies (Author), Robert Cailliau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000 | Series: Popular Science

In 1994, a computer program called the Mosaic browser transformed the Internet from an academic tool into a telecommunications revolution. Now a household name, the World Wide Web is a prominent fixture in the modern communications landscape, with tens of thousands of servers providing information to millions of users. Few people, however, realize that the Web was born at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, and that it was invented by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee.
Offering its readers an unprecedented "insider's" perspective, this new book was co-written by two CERN employees--one of whom, Robert Cailliau, was among the Web's pioneers. It tells how the idea for the Web came about at CERN, how it was developed, and how it was eventually handed over at no charge for the rest of the world to use. The first book-length account of the Web's development, How the Web was Born draws upon several interviews with the key players in this amazing story. This compelling and highly topical book is certain to interest all general readers with a taste for the Web or the Internet, as well as students and teachers of computing, technology, and applied science.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It's hard to believe that there was a time--not long ago--when the digital fairyland of commerce, soapboxing, and pornography called the World Wide Web was just a file-sharing tool for nerds, but there's a first time for everything. How the Web Was Born, by CERN's James Gillies and Robert Cailliau, follows the trail from the dawn of ARPANet through the mid-90s, just as the Web boom was beginning to take off in earnest. That may seem like an odd ending point, but the post-1995 story has already been told ad nauseam, and the writers know how to quit while they're ahead. The story is told from widely varying viewpoints and across shifting timelines as the various players are introduced and observed; this adds some complexity to the narrative, but yields a truer picture of the team efforts required to devise and launch the Web. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Tim Berners-Lee (of course), and many more, figure prominently in the interwoven tales, and are briefly summarized in an abridged cast list at the end of the book, along with a paper and electronic bibliography. The book assumes some knowledge and interest on the part of the reader and saves its big-picture context for the end, but provides reader motivation both by its subject's inherent interest and the recurrent personalization of the story. Neither textbook nor CERN propaganda, How the Web Was Born offers an engagingly networked collection of characters that, like their invention, creates something larger than the sum of its parts. --Rob Lightner

Review

`This is a scholarly work for the price of a novel' Gareth Price

`It is not a light read but it is a good one!' David Coleman, Multimedia Information and Technology, February 2001

`excellent book' New Scientist 30/9/00

`a good read' Glasgow Herald, 22/9/00

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 372 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192862073
• ISBN-13: 978-0192862075
• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.1 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #772,476 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars How the Web (not the Internet) was born February 15, 2008

By Jeff VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

HTWWB is a detailed look at what brought us to where the Web was at the end of the last century. There is a good (although not as good as Where Wizards Stay Up Late) description of how the Internet itself came to be, and then it goes into the whole set of precursors to what Tim Berners-Lee invented at CERN, which became the Web.

The book is notable for really digging back into the precursors of the Web. I've been in networking since 1979 and there were a lot of new things for me to learn in the book.

The book is weak where it over invests in the politics at CERN and especially around the horse-trading that resulted in the consortia that manages the Web, W3C. The last fifty pages of what been an engrossing read just drag and drag.

I'd give the first two thirds of the book at least four stars, the last third two at best. Still, if you're really interested in how things like URL, HTTP, HTML, DNS, etc came about, this is worth making the effort.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Once upon a time in the web! February 12, 2006

By Hiram Gomez Pardo HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

The Physician Gillies and computation scientific Cailliau gives us an impressive recount, without technical lexicon, about how the actual Web spouted since a Physics lab in Geneva environs.

All the implications generated by this colossal invention, including the whole change of paradigms and profound transformations in our quotidian lives are described with notable erudition and precision.

Once you have started it will be too hard to leave this passionate reading.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, Rivetting and Spellbinding February 5, 2001

By "jb4mt"

Format:Paperback

OK, so I'm used to reviewing books of a more technical nature ;)

This account of the beginning of the web is both entertaining and informative. I highly recommend it to anybody whose introduction to computer science has been the web: this book will fill in a lot of the gaps about the origins of all sorts of topics ,such as hypertext and networking.

I find it interesting that the authors did not always take a linear approach to their subject. Several chapters concentrated on a particular sub-topic, bringing it forward from its root in the fifties or sixties or even earlier, all the way through the nineties.

Then the next chapter would likewise deal with a different but related sub-topic. I found this non-linear approach to be much like the World Wide Web itself. Considering one of the authors was intimately involved with the birth of the Web, I wouldn't be surprised if the book were intended to flow this way....it makes it so that you could conceivably jump around from chapter, just like jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink....

This book might also make good reading for people who are close to web geeks, but aren't geeks themselves. As long as they are intelligent enough to understand computing concepts, it will help explain to them what this fascination of ours is all about. Hey, it may even get THEM interested ;)