There are any number of reasons the little quirks of modern computing find their way into our daily lives and end up staying there for years on end. But you can often trace such arcana back to a very personal moment, when a particular computing pioneer had to make a choice. Sometimes, these choices were random. Sometimes, they were carefully thought out. But chances are, they werent made in an effort to change the course of the computing history. The choices were made. And, for some reason, they stuck. Here, we take a quick look at some of these picks from heaven (see images above), and if you can think of more, do drop us a note. We begin with Tim Berners-Lee, who appeared last Friday in London during the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web while working at Switzerland’s CERN nuclear research lab in the late-80s and the 90s, but he hails from Great Britain. As it hosts a third Olympics games, Britain took the opportunity to remind the world that the web started with one of its own. The world now seems to think that Berners-Lee founded the entire internet, but thats not Britains fault. The origins of the internet can be traced back to the 1960s. What Berners-Lee did is invent the web browser, a way of sharing information across the internet and linking it all together with hypertext like this. Hes the one who decided that every web address should begin with . No, its not the most elegant of choices, but he makes no apologies. When he designed the web address, Berners-Lee recently told us, it wasnt supposed to be seen by the average web user. It was meant solely for the technicians behind the scenes. On the initial design of the web, you didn’t see the when you were a user. You just read text and you clicked on links, he said. In the original web browser, you had to bring up a special link inspector to see addresses. That’s why I wasn’t worried about being ugly. No one would really see it. HTTP is short for hypertext transfer protocol, the basis for moving web pages across the net. And he used that colon and those slashes because they were things the computer wonks of the day would be familiar with. The double slash was inspired by a file system for a computer workstation of the day known as the Apollo/Domain. The double slashes were there because, on some computer systems, that was already used to mean: ‘We’re going outside the computer now.’ The single slash was for the local file system. The double slash was for the outside. The Apollo/Domain is gone. But those slashes are still here. And theyre not going away anytime soon. Image: Flickr/ Pixel y Dixel Got a secret? Email caleb_garling [a] wired. Caleb covers tech, but loves other stuff like sports, fiction, beer, fun in remote places and music featuring guitars. Encircle on Google+, subscribe on Facebook or Read more by Caleb Garling Follow @calebgarling on Twitter. WE RECOMMEND RECOMMENDED BY How Home Depot Copied Apple to Build an Ingenious New Bucket 4 World-Changing Products Dreamed Up by Bill Gates Top 10 Dirtiest Hotels in the World You Shouldn’t Stay at - AMERIKANKI Tags: computers, dennis ritchie, Doug Cutting, Ken Thompson, Ray Tomlinson, Tim Berners-Lee Post Comment | 7 Comments | Permalink Share on Facebook124 shares Reddit DiggStumble UponEmail FOLLOW WIRED ENTERPRISE TWITTER FACEBOOK RSS MOST RECENT WIRED POSTS Your First Look at Michael Bay’s ‘Roided-Out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles WIRED Space Photo of the Day: Comet Siding Spring Science Graphic of the Week: Radar Reveals Massive Antarctic Ice Retreat New Jupiter Ascending Trailer Will Make You Fall in Love With Sci-Fi Again Google and Facebook Team Up to Modernize Old-School Databases You’ve Never Heard of Her, But This Is Modern Comedy’s Secret Weapon Fossil Detectives Close the Case on Prehistoric Spider Footprints TRENDING NOW ON WIRED The Mathematical Formula for Beauty, Explained in Clever Pictures Your First Look at Michael Bays Roided-Out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles How a Chinese Tech Firm Became the NSAs Surveillance Nightmare A Startlingly Simple Theory About the Missing Malaysia Airlines Jet Youve Never Heard of Her, But This Is Modern Comedys Secret Weapon SUBSCRIBE TO WIRED MAGAZINE ADVERTISEMENT WIRED enterprise EDITOR Cade Metz SENIOR WRITER Robert McMillan CONTRIBUTOR Klint Finley Send us a tip SERVICES Quick Links: Contact Us | Newsletter | RSS Feeds | Tech Jobs | Wired Mobile | FAQ | Site Map Collapse PREVIOUS ARTICLE Greenpeace Blimp Protests Apples Dirty Energy Company NEXT ARTICLE NBC Olympics Site Delivers 75M Video Streams, 744M Page Views
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 21:07:56 +0000
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