--On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 14:29 +0100 Huub van Helvoort
<huubatwork(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
It was actually a Dutchman who made the first international
connection on November 17, 1988 that enabled the start of the
world wide web...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Beertema
Met vriendelijke groet, Huub.
Independent of Piet's accomplishments (and they have been
considerable), that Wikipedia article is just nonsense.
As others have pointed out, the first international connections
were to the UK and Norway, not The Netherlands. The ccTLD
system was established at the "request" of the UK and the US and
UK ccTLDs were the first ones delegated. Without digging
through old records, I don't remember who was third, but NO is a
more likely candidate than NL.
I really wish that we could somehow restore the spirit of a
collaborative effort, one with many cooperating contributors to
overall network effects rather than seeing people (or their
admirers) scrambling to claim to be first at some important
components of the network. If the network and associated
technologies had not been rather well developed by the time the
web came along, it probably would have failed to get traction,
just as prior efforts that were not intrinsically less developed
did. That doesn't make the web contributions and timing less
important, but our perspective should be broader. In that same
light, I hope there is an appropriate commemoration in a bit
over a year of the publication of "As We May Think" paper and
wish we had done a better job of commemorating the first
appearances of the "Intergalactic Computer Network" and
"Contacts and Influence" ones.
john