Sept 3 — Layers on layers...

Things build in layers.
Things build on top of each other.
Things build on other things.

The world wide web was invented around 1990 by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee.

When I first began tinkering with a software program that eventually became the World Wide Web, I named it *Enquire*, short for *Enquire Within upon Everything*, a musty old book of Victorian advice I noticed as a child in my parents' house outside London. With its title suggestive of magic, the book served as a portal to a world of information, everything from how to remove clothing stains to tips on investing money. Not a perfect analogy for the Web, but a primitive starting point.

Initially, the web was used to efficiently share papers among scientists. That is, it originated from books. So the world’s first website looks like a document, and many HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) terms are related to typography. Things build on other things...

That said, the world wide web is just one layer of the internet...

How did the internet begin? One version of this story begins in the 1950s. By this time, the history of communication systems had already had many successes. For example, there was the printing press, followed by the typewriter, then the telegraph, telephone, radio, television, etc…

Two especially important precursors to the internet are:

1) The electronic telegraph, which used Morse Code to send short textual messages. The first cables (for telegraph) were operational in 1839.

2) By the 1950’s, the dominant communication is the telephone, which was built on top of the telegraph. Many people have telephones, and the network is strong. There are no wireless telephones, but there are television and radio which don’t need wires.

Continued in class...