The First on the World Wide Web

To create anything  needs a lot of imagination but to be the very first to show something new to the world needs a bit of courage and a whole lot of determination. Various improvements can be made to any given product but to be the very first in any field carries a permanent distinction. As a tribute to all the great pioneers here is a list of the  Firsts in the History of Internet:

The First Browser:

When you think of the Internet, the first thing that comes in the mind is the web-browser. So, let’s start up the  first ever browser built, that initiated the phenomenon called web-browsing.

Mosiac is considered to be the first browser. Though, strictly speaking the first web browser was Worldwideweb developed by Tim Berners-Lee. He later named it Nexus to avoid the confusion with the word ‘Web’  itself, but sadly it never reached the mass market and hence Mosaic is credited to be the first ever Browser.

Mosaic was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, both students of University of IIIinois, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. It was first used in Computers with Unix OS on June 1993. The credit for creating a browser however  goes to Berner-Lee as Mosaic was built on his server by including support for Graphics, Sound and Video Clips.

Mosaic was ofcourse a commercial success with the name Netscape Navigator as it gave hundred of thousands of people their first glimpse of the web.

The First Email:

Arpanet is the centre of origin  for the Internet.  A large contribution for the development of Electronic mail, also known as E-mail was made by the Arpanet but the credit of sending the first mail goes to Ray Tomlinson in the late 1972. He was an engineer and was working on time-sharing system called Tenex. He combined two programs Cpynet and SNDMSG in order to send the first ever network email. Moreover, he is also credited for using the “@” sign to distinguish between the username and domain name.

The contents of the first email transmission have long since been forgotten. According to Ray Tomlinson (who sent the message between two computers located side-by-side) claimed that the contents were ‘entirely forgettable, and I have, therefore, forgotten them’, and speculates that the message was most likely ‘QWERTYUIOP’ or something similar.

The First Emotion:

The man to invent the first smiley is Scott Fahlman. He is credited with originating the first ASCII-based smiley emoticon, , in the early 1980s. Now, a user favourite smileys are very popular and everybody uses them in messenger programs, chat rooms, and e-mail.

In the words of Fahlman:
“I was probably not the first person ever to type these three letters in sequence, perhaps even with the meaning of ‘I’m just kidding’ and perhaps even online, But I do believe that my 1982 suggestion was the one that finally took hold and spread around the world.”

The First Virus:

ARPANET, once again pops up as the place were the first ever virus was found. In 1971 the first virus named, ‘Creeper’ , was created by Bob Thomas. However, Creeper was not malicious. It simply displayed a message,
“I’m Creeper: Catch me if you can.”

In response to Creeper, the first ever  anti-virus was created, namely Reaper, it also spread throughout the system in the same manner and removed the virus as soon as it spread.

As, Creeper was not malicious, it is not considered to be the first Virus. Instead, Elk Cloner is regarded as the first computer virus. It was created by Richard Skrenta and the virus spreaded via floppy disks.

However, the first PC virus is regarded as Brain, a boot sector virus creatd by the Farooq Alvi Brothers from Pakistan.

The First Search Engine:

In 1990, much before  Google started flexing its muscles the first Search Engine named Archie was created. It was developed by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, all three students at McGill University in Montreal. The name Archie derives from the word “archive” without the letter v and has nothing to do with the popular comic series Archie Archie comics.

The First Blog:

The term “Blog” came from the word “Weblog”. Weblog was coined by Jorn Barger in December 1997 which later became Blog. Whatever it was called, blogging came into existence much before that.

The first person to start blogging has never been identified. However, Justin hall, an American freelance journalist, is regarded to be the first blogger. He started blogging (the term was not invented then) back in 1994 when he was a student at Swarthmore College. His website was called Justin’s Links From the Underground. It was a personal blog and hall shared his relationships, passions, plans, ideas and everything that could be shared. Justin’s blog was like his an online diary.

The First Youtube Video:

Youtube, is only five years old and latest news regarding Youtbe is that it got a billion subscription which shows how Youtube has gorwn exponentially.  Youtube came into existence in 2005 and the inspiration behind Youtube was the Janet Jackson’s dress malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl. Since no one could find the footage of it on the net three ebay employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim,started out the video sharing facilty.

The first video on the site was posted on 23 April 2005, and remains there today. “Me at the zoo” is a man called Karim’s 18-second long report from the elephant enclosure at San Diego zoo. The video has nothing significant and display’s a strange message flashing up: “Can you hear the goat. Meeeeeeh!!”

But the best part and its historical significance means that it has had well over a million hits so far.

The First Social Networking Site:

What’s the most popular thing on the Internet? The answer might be Social networking or the likes of facebook. Social networking was initiated long before Facebook was created. The pioneer of Social networking site was Classmates.com. It is the mother of all social networking site and inspired a number of them in various countries worldwide.

The idea of Social networking was initiated because of reunions. According to founder of Classmates.com, Randy Conrads.

“I thought there was a lot of strength in high-school affinities, the desire to get together and travel long distances and spend a lot of money in hotels in order to talk to each other, and the internet, as it grew, could be a place for people to connect like that. I thought if I could do it for all high schools, maybe I could make a business.”

So, that was how social networking came into existence in 1995. The rest of social networking is well described by the popularity of Facebook and its imitations.

The First Post on Wikipedia

Wikipedia, today stands as the largest online encyclopedia with information for every single person who uses the Internet.
Wikipedia was originated in the free-content reference project known as Nupedia, founded in 2000 by Jimmy wales. Nupedia later became Wikipedia which means Collaborative generation of content.
The first article for Wikipedia, quite randomly was “atonality”, written by German academic Christoph Hust. But because of a flaw only 12 article were published after a year.

In 2004, the collaborative wiki software was utilized and Wikipedia was unleashed. Unfortunately, all the original articles were lost.

Today, the first words that appeared on Wikipedia is considered to be “hello world” typed by Wales.

With the success of Wikipedia, the words of Wales are;

“Once the wiki started, lots of people began to contribute, and that’s when I realised it was pretty exciting and could really take off, Except that obviously it’s a bit big bigger than I ever imagined.”

The First ebay sale:

Ebay was initially called Auctionweb when it was lauched in September 1995. It was the French- Iranian programmer, Pierre Omidyar, who came up with the idea of online auctioning. It was not the first auction sites but because of the design and the marketing it was the most popular.

The first item to change hands at auction was a broken laser pointer offered by Omidyar himself, finally purchased for $14.83. Omidyar had the courtesy to contact the winning bidder and warn them they were buying faulty goods, but the buyer claimed to collect broken laser pointers.
So, the sale went through.

The First Tweet:

The microblogging site and the sms of Internet was developed by Jack Dorsey. The test based posts in 140 words was created in 2006. It was very popular since it was created. Today, twitter boasts of 100 million active users which is to increase every day.
The first tweet was posted on March 21, 2006, by Dorsey himself at 9:50 PM:
“just setting up my twttr.”
About the origin of the word Twitter, Dorsey says;
[W]e came across the word “twitter,” and it was just perfect. The definition was “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds.” And that’s exactly what the product was.

The First Email Spam:

Spamming is an old marketing technique. Gary Thurek, sent his first mass e-mailing to customers over the Arpanet for Digital’s new T-series of VAX systems. At that time he had no clue that he had sent the world’s first spam.

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