Meanwhile, research universities across America were linking to each other as well. This linkage was enough to interest companies like IBM, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Xerox, and other corporate giants, who saw the utility of such a link, and when they added their WANs to the mix, this academic and corporate partnership became the worldwide backbone for the Internet.

It all came together in 1989, when Tim Berniers-Lee and Robert Calliau at CERN in Switzerland invented a graphics-based user interface, so that people could just point and click. The late 1980s were key in several ways. First, more and more people were buying personal computers. Second, a mouse had become standard on those personal computers, and both the IBM/compatible (via Microsoft Windows) and Macintosh platforms could just click onscreen objects to cause the computer to take an action. No longer did people have to enter long strings of letters and numbers to make something happen on their computers (as in DOS, the precursor to Windows, now the underpinning for Windows).

So you have clickable computers, lots of them, and a worldwide network. Hmmmmmm, what can we do with this? In the beginning, only a few hardy souls put information on this "World Wide Web," and they blazed the trail for all of us.

Please use your browser's Back button (located in the top left corner of this window, under Edit on the menu bar) to go back to the first page of this Unit, and then click on Introduction Part III to finish this Unit!