Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2001 01:38:28 -0500
Reply-To: TOURBUS-Request@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Sender: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
From: Bob Rankin
Subject: TOURBUS - 11 Dec 01 - Web History / Ig Nobels
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TOURBUS Volume 7, Number 39 -- 11 Dec 2001
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\___/ \___/ T h e I n t e r n e t T o u r B u s \___/
SIX YEARS of Searchable Archives at http://www.TOURBUS.com !!
TODAY'S TOURBUS TOPIC: The Early Web / Ig Nobel Prizes
What do high-energy physics and atom smashers have to do with the
genesis of the Web? Quite a bit, actually! It was in September 1991
that Tim Berners-Lee, an English physicist working at the CERN lab in
Geneva, created the Web and the first browser. All well and good,
except there wasn't anything *on* the Web...
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THE WEB TURNS TEN
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Enter particle physicist Paul Kunz, who happened to be visiting CERN
from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Upon receiving a
demo of the Web application, Kunz realized it would enable him to
build a friendly interface to a database at SLAC. After returning
home, he installed Berners-Lee's web server software at SLAC, and
created a web page that would allow physicists all over the world to
query a database of high-energy physics papers via the Internet.
Exactly ten years ago today, Kunz created the first website in the
United States. But more importantly, it was the first useful
application of the Web. At a conference in France in January 1992,
Berners-Lee did a demonstration for 200 physicists from around the
world, who were stunned when they saw how easy it was to access the
SLAC database 6000 miles away.
>From that point on, the number of web users and websites began to grow
exponentially. Click below to read a CNET interview with Paul Kunz
and learn more about the history of the early Web.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1014-201-8104108-0.html
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MORE INTERNET HISTORY
-----------------------
The history of computing and the story of how the Internet came to be
are fascinating subjects to me. But it's too big a story to tell
here, so I've pulled together some excellent links that you can use to
explore it at your leisure.
HOBBES' INTERNET TIMELINE gives a brief history of Internet milestones
from 1957 to present.
http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline
INTERNET HISTORIES FROM ISOC is a page put together by the Internet
Society listing about twenty different "History of the Internet"
stories. Many of these articles are written by the people who
actually invented the hardware, software and technology concepts that
became the foundation of the Internet.
http://www.isoc.org/internet-history
"WHERE WIZARDS STAY UP LATE: THE ORIGINS OF THE INTERNET" is a book
that tells the story of the origins of the Internet, based on
interviews with the people who made it happen. Perhaps you've never
heard of Bob Taylor, Vint Cerf or J.R. Licklider but after reading
this book you'll want to thank them. Search for the book here:
http://bestwebbuys.com/books/search?q=0684832674&t=ISBN
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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...
-----------------------------------------------
Surely you've heard of the Nobel Prize, which is awarded for great
achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace.
This week The Nobel Prize celebrated it's 100th anniversary, but I
digress...
What I meant to discuss was The IG NOBEL Prize, which honors
individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced."
The Igs, which are sponsored by the science humor magazine Annals of
Improbable Research, are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the
imaginative, and take a good-natured poke at some remarkably goofy
things done in the name of science. This year's winners were
announced in October and included the following:
PHYSICS: David Schmidt for his $28000 partial solution to the
question of why shower curtains billow in and stick to your leg.
BIOLOGY: Buck Weimer for inventing airtight underwear with a
replaceable charcoal filter that removes bad-smelling gases.
TECHNOLOGY: John Keogh for patenting the wheel. The Australian
Patent Office shared the honors for granting Patent #2001100012.
PUBLIC HEALTH: Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of Bangalore,
India, for their probing medical discovery in the field of
Rhinotillexomania (a.k.a. nose picking) among adolescents.
You can read all about the IG NOBEL prizes, listen to highlights of
the ceremony, and peruse the archives of past winners here:
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html
That's all for now, I'll see you next time! --Bob Rankin
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