25 years of Mosaic: the beginnings of the modern Web
25 years of Mosaic: the beginnings of the modern Web In the beginning, the Web or WEB as it was then called was a mystery. Like Gopher and Archie, it was a text-based internet interface that only the proudest, most knowledgeable Internet user knew. But everything changed quickly. First, the Commercial Internet Exchange allowed anyone to connect to the Internet . Then two students from the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, created the first popular Web browser: Mosaic . The first beta version of Mosaic for Unix systems using X Window was released on January 23, 1993. It was still not the first graphical browser. This honor goes to ViolaWWW , a Unix browser, although some argue that the little known Erwise should be considered the first web browser. On Windows, it is Cello who wins the title of first graphic browser. But no matter who was first, everyone agrees that Mosaic was the first trul...