10 Fun Facts aboutThe InternetBy Lucy and Ailish:)

Fact 1

The Internet began as a single page 

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

Which contained information about this new-fangled “WorldWideWeb” project, and how you too could make a hypertext page. Sadly, the original page was never saved, but you can view it after 2 years of revisions here.

Fact 2

Estimated 637 million websites were online in 2013

Fact 3

The first webcam was deployed at Cambridge University computer lab – its sole purpose to monitor a particular coffee maker and hence avoid wasted trips to an empty pot.

Fact 4

The first tweet was sent on March 21, 2006 by Jack Dorsey:

Fact 5

The first YouTube video was uploaded April 23, 2005. It’s called “Me at the zoo,” and features Jawed Karim, one of the founders, at the San Diego Zoo.

It’s only 18 seconds long

Fact 6

The GIF format was invented by Steve Wilke, an engineer at Compuserve in 1987.

Mr. Wilhite maintains the correct pronunciation of the term is “jiff.”

He is clearly wrong.

Fact 7

The Amazon logo is indicating you can get everything from A to Z (look at the arrow):

Fact 8

The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads;[3] Internet memes are a subset of this general meme concept specific to the culture and environment of the Internet.

Fact 9

Although the World Wide Web is often referred to as the Internet, the two are not the same thing. The Internet is a huge network of networks that links computers together all over the world using a range of wires and wireless technologies. The World Wide Web is the collection of linked pages that are accessed using the Internet and a web browser.

Fact 10

There are more devices connected to the Web than living human beings. 7.125 billion people (2013). The believed number of internet connected devices was 8.7 billion in 2012. There are a number of estimates out there by others, but they are generally in the eight to ten billion range.

Bonus Fact!

In 2004 Google bought Gmail from Garfield.com