The ViCTE Newsletter

Helps professionals keep and improve their English through the Internet since February 2009

Number 5 May 2009

Shortly about the WWW history – Part 1

The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. A Web browser enables a user to view Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia. Moreover, the browser ensures navigation between the pages using hyperlinks. The Web was created around 1990 by the English Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian Robert Cailliau working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

The term Web is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, as e-mail does. The history of the Internet dates back significantly further than that of the Web.

The origins of the World Wide Web can be traced back to 1980. Then Tim Berners-Lee and Jedda Smith built ENQUIRE, as a personal database of people and software models at CERN. Each new page of information in ENQUIRE had to be linked to an existing page. Later Berners-Lee considered problems of information sharing among high-energy physicists from around the world. So, in March 1989 he wrote a proposal for “a large hypertext database with typed links”, but it generated little interest. Nevertheless, Berners-Lee began implementing his system on a newly acquired NeXT workstation. The system was called World Wide Web.

References:

Wilipedia, the free encyclopedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

PS: See more technical texts and discuss them at http://techenglish.wordpress.com

Vocabulary

English

Russian

Czech
hypertext документ, который содержит видимые ссылки на другой документ в Интернете hypertext, tj. text, který obsahuje propojení na jíné texty
Web browser веб браузер webový prohlížeč
Web pages веб-страница webové stránky
hyperlink гиперссылка – фрагмент HTML-документа,
указывающий на другой файл в Интернете		 hypertextový odkaz, tj. reference na další informace na Internetu
NeXT workstation NeXT компьютер, работающий в составе компьютерной сети NeXT pracovní stanice-počítač
information sharing распределенное использование информации sdílění informací
high-energy physics физика высоких энергий fyzika elementárních částic
CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research, derived from the French Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) Европейская лаборатория физики элементарных частиц Evropská organizace pro jaderný výzkum

Exercise 1: Fill in gaps in the text with words from the table below

mistakenly over linked software hyperlinks
  1. The World Wide Web is a system of hypertext documents running … (1) … the Internet.
  2. The Web browser ensures navigation between the Web pages using … (2) ….
  3. The term Web is often … (3) … used as a synonym for the Internet itself.
  4. Each new page of information in ENQUIRE had to be … (4) … to an existing page.
  5. ENQUIRE was a personal database of people and … (5) … models at CERN.

Exercise 2: Use the word in capitals given in brackets at the end of each line to form a related word that fits in the space in the same line

Example:

The … … … of the World Wide Web can be traced back to 1980. [ORIGINAL]

The origins of the World Wide Web can be traced back to 1980.

1 The Web was created around 1990 by T. Berners-Lee and R. Cailliau … … … at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. [WORK]

2 The Web is a service that … … … over the Internet. [OPERATION]

3 The history of the Internet dates back … … … further than that of the Web. [SIGNIFY]

4 Berners-Lee considered problems of … … … sharing among high-energy physicists from around the world. [inFORMING]

5 Berners-Lee began implementing his system on a newly … … … NeXT workstation. [ACQUISITION]


TEST YOUR knowledge of English grammar!

Visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/apps/ifl/worldservice/quiznet/quizengine?ContentType=text/html;quiz=1526_quiznet

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