Last weekend marked 20 years since the famous Usenet post from Tim Berners-Lee announcing the WorldWideWeb project. The post was made in the alt.hypertext newsgroup on August 6th, 1991. Since then several important announcements have come via Usenet but the WWW post is definitely one of our favorites. Along with a book Tim wrote and published years later in 1999 titled Weaving the Web. In which he writes about how the World Wide Web was created and the social implications of the technology.
Along with the Tim Berner’s Lee WWW announcement here are some more interesting Usenet posts:
- Logical Map of Usenet in 1981 – net.general
- The Kremvax Hoax – eunet.politics
- Discussion of Y2K Problem in 1985 – net.bugs
- Brad Templeton’s ClariNet Announcement – news.admin
- Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Announcement – comp.sys.ibm.pc
- Tim Berners-Lee WorldWideWeb Project Announcement – alt.hypertext
- Linus Torvalds Linux Announcement – comp.os.minix
- Marc Andreessen Netscape Announcement – comp.infosystems.www.users
- AltaVista Launch Announcement – biz.digital.announce
You will find that Google Groups is a good source for historical text posts like those listed above. To learn more about binary newsgroup access visit the Usenet providers section of NewsgroupReviews.com.
Without a doubt we missed some famous / interesting Usenet posts. The newsgroup articles mentioned above are some of our favorites. Please share yours with us @NewsgroupRevs so we can add them to the list.
