Invention of WWW and E-Commerce

World Wide Web

(Techspot, 2023)

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a British computer scientist. He was born in London, and his parents were early computer scientists, working on one of the earliest computers.

Growing up, Sir Tim was interested in trains and had a model railway in his bedroom. He recalls:

“I made some electronic gadgets to control the trains. Then I ended up getting more interested in electronics than trains. Later on, when I was in college I made a computer out of an old television set.”

After graduating from Oxford University, Berners-Lee became a software engineer at CERN, the large particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Scientists come from all over the world to use its accelerators, but Sir Tim noticed that they were having difficulty sharing information.(World Wide Web Foundation, 2022)

(Cern)

“In those days, there was different information on different computers, but you had to log on to different computers to get at it. Also, sometimes you had to learn a different program on each computer. Often it was just easier to go and ask people when they were having coffee…”, Tim says.

Tim thought he saw a way to solve this problem – one that he could see could also have much broader applications. Already, millions of computers were being connected together through the fast-developing internet and Berners-Lee realised they could share information by exploiting an emerging technology called hypertext.

In March 1989, Tim laid out his vision for what would become the web in a document called “Information Management: A Proposal”. Believe it or not, Tim’s initial proposal was not immediately accepted. In fact, his boss at the time, Mike Sendall, noted the words “Vague but exciting” on the cover. The web was never an official CERN project, but Mike managed to give Tim time to work on it in September 1990. He began work using a NeXT computer, one of Steve Jobs’ early products.(World Wide Web Foundation, 2022)

(Cern)

By October of 1990, Tim had written the three fundamental technologies that remain the foundation of today’s web (and which you may have seen appear on parts of your web browser):

 

∎  HTML: HyperText Markup Language. The markup (formatting) language for the web.

∎  URI: Uniform Resource Identifier. A kind of “address” that is unique and used to identify to each resource on the web. It is also commonly called a URL.

∎  HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Allows for the retrieval of linked resources from across the web.(World Wide Web Foundation, 2022)

E-Commerce

Most of us have shopped online for something at some point, which means we've taken part in ecommerce. So it goes without saying that ecommerce is everywhere. But very few people may know that ecommerce has a history that goes back before the internet began.

Ecommerce actually goes back to the 1960s when companies used an electronic system called the Electronic Data Interchange to facilitate the transfer of documents. It wasn't until 1994 that the very first transaction took place. This involved the sale of a CD between friends through an online retail website called NetMarket.

The industry has gone through so many changes since then, resulting in a great deal of evolution. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers were forced to embrace new technology in order to stay afloat as companies like Alibaba, Amazon, eBay, and Etsy became household names. These companies created a virtual marketplace for goods and services that consumers can easily access.

New technology continues to make it easier for people to do their online shopping. People can connect with businesses through smartphones and other devices and by downloading apps to make purchases. The introduction of free shipping, which reduces costs for consumers, has also helped increase the popularity of the ecommerce industry.(Bloomenthal, 2023)

(eCommerceNews Australia, 2023)

When was Online Shopping/E-Commerce invented?

Online shopping was invented in pioneered in 1979 by entrepreneur Michael Aldrich in the United Kingdom. Aldrich was able to connect a modified domestic television to a real-time multi-user transaction processing computer via a telephone line. The system was marketed in 1980 and offered as business-to-business systems that were then sold in the UK, Ireland, and Spain.(Miva)

Reference List:

Andrew Bloomenthal (2023) 'Ecommerce Defined: Types, History, and Examples', Investopidea, 06 July.  Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ecommerce.asp (Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

Cern (no date) Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web inventor. Available at: http://cds.cern.ch/record/39437#31(Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

Cern (no date) Tim Berners-Lee's Proposal. Available at: http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html (Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

eCommerceNews Australia (2023) 'Marketplacer partners with Omnivore to enhance eCommerce'. Available at: https://ecommercenews.com.au/story/marketplacer-partners-with-omnivore-to-enhance-ecommerce (Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

Miva (no date) 'The History of Ecommerce: How Did It All Begin?', Miva, 23 November. Available at: https://blog.miva.com/the-history-of-ecommerce-how-did-it-all-begin (Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

Techspot (2021) 'The first gained access to the World Wide Web 25 years ago today'. Available at: https://www.techspot.com/news/66067-public-first-gained-access-world-wide-web-25.html(Accessed: 21 January, 2023)

World Wide Web Foundation (2022) 'History of the Web'. Available at: https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/ (Accessed: 21 January, 2023)