Jeff Gelles: A look back at the World Wide Web's first 20 years

The World Wide Web turned 20 on Saturday, if a technology can be said to celebrate birthdays. That was the date in 1991 when the first website went online at CERN, the Swiss particle-physics laboratory where British scientist Tim Berners-Lee developed its essential software.

The Web's multinational origins - not to mention its ambitious name and now familiar initials - foreshadowed its immense global import. Berners-Lee set out to provide scientists a better way to present and share information across the Internet, with a common "browser" interface and point-and-click ease. What he created has transformed how much of the world works, shops, and plays.

Today, the mobile Internet captures increasing attention with applications for smartphones and tablets that bypass the Web. But the Web is still essential, and a birthday is a chance to reminisce.

Here's a taste of what I found during a tour through the archives - an easy trip with the Web's databases at your fingertips.

First steps. The Inquirer first mentioned the Web in June 1994, in a profile of two recent Swarthmore College graduates with a new business, NetMarket, that was starting out by selling flowers and music via "the hottest new Internet route, a graphics-based path known as the World Wide Web."

"At their music store, you type in the name of the artist or whatever part of the title you remember, and up pops a list of songs and albums," the article said. "You can look at a picture of the album cover and even listen to a 30-second sample of the music to try to match it with the melody in your mind."

The concept was simple and was eventually echoed by the founders of Amazon.com and thousands of other familiar sites. But implementing it wasn't, recalls one of NetMarket's founders, Guy Haskin Fernald. For one thing, the company had to address a concern that still bedevils Internet commerce today: how to ensure that online transactions are secure.

The start-up's whiz kids - three Swarthmore grads and a friend from Yale - drew credit from publications such as Computerworld for taking an essential step: NetMarket was the first site to protect credit-card and other personal data with "public-key encryption," which let any computer user send sensitive data to a website in encrypted form.