--On Wednesday, March 12, 2014 14:29 +0100 Huub van Helvoort <huubatwork@xxxxxxxxx> 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