Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society

Day: 1 May 2013

  • 20 years of the Free and Open World Wide Web

    20 years of the Free and Open World Wide Web

    Twenty years ago on April 30, 1993, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) published a statement making available the World Wide Web (WWW) technology it invented on a royalty-free basis for anyone to use.

    To mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of that document,  CERN (the acronym stands for “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire”) has restored the first website (which documented the WWW project) at its original URL at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

    Screenshot of the first website at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

    CERN has also announced a project to “preserve the digital assets that are associated with the birth of the web at http://info.cern.ch/.  

    Visit  http://info.cern.ch/ to learn more about the history and work by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 to create the World Wide Web.

    Vinton Cerf  (co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols that allows devices on the Internet to communicate to each other) and Robert Cailliau  (who collaborated with Tim Berners Lee on the WWW project at CERN)  have also written articles on the 20th anniversary of CERN’s publication of the WWW technology.

  • History of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) in Trinidad and Tobago

    History of Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) in Trinidad and Tobago

    This is a historical record of the Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) which were in operation in Trinidad and Tobago between 1986 and 2000.

    A BBS was a computer system that allowed users to connect to the system (typically via dial up modems). Users logged in could chat, email, download files, post messages in forums for other users to read and respond to. BBSes were a precursor to what many persons do on the Internet today, social networking, downloading files, chat, reading and posting in forums or on email lists.

    Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) in Trinidad and Tobago were a popular means of communications beginning in the late 1980s even though personal computers were expensive and few persons actually had one at home. That scenario began to change by the early 1990s as prices on computer hardware began to decrease and modem speeds increased.

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