From 1962 to present (no, that’s not a typo), Vitamin T and An Event Apart have pulled together A Brief History of Web Standards. This infographic has a lot of interesting factoids and information about the evolution of the Web.
Now, when you’re thinking “Web standards,” you’re probably thinking about things like HTML and CSS standards. The graphic touches on those, but pays particular attention to “standards” like typefaces and Godwin’s Law (created in 1990, by the way).
You probably already knew that Arpanet was established in 1962, but did you know that “hypertext” was coined in 1965 by Ted Nelson? What about the fact that only 1.9% of the world’s population were using the Internet in 1998?
Some other interesting tidbits: The first Web site went online in December of 1990. By the following year there were a whopping 10 sites online, and 50 the following year. In 1993, the Web comprised a total of 623 sites.
The predictions are pretty conservative, especially the last: “People will continue to complain that the W3C moves too slowly and that browser vendors make stuff up too willy-nilly.” Well, yeah. With the final HTML5 spec not due out for years, it’s hard to argue that the W3C moves fast enough.
