www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com

@nethistorypod @brianmcc

Summary:

Rob McCool is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Unlike a lot of the others we have spoken to, he worked more on the server side of the equation for both projects. Rob was also the original author of the NCSA HTTPd web server, later known as the Apache HTTP Server, so we can think of him as the Godfather of Apache. He was a contributor to the initial specification of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and later what became known as the Netscape Enterprise Server. Rob went on to work at both Yahoo and Onlive. He is currently at Google, where he works on structured Knowledge Bases and semantics.

Summary:

Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions of both Mosiac and Navigator eventually became the project manager for the Netscape Navigator project on the whole. He gives us great background and details about the development of browsers, the creation of features (he is the father of the hand icon, for example, and was instrumental in bringing image support to the web) and early web advancements in general.

Summary:

Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosiac. They don’t call him “Mac Daddy” for nothing. He was then one of the 6 original programmers recruited by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark to form Netscape. Aleks gives us some excellent behind the scenes anecdotes about both projects, and what it was like to head out to California to work on some crazy startup before doing something like that was “cool.”

A few fun nuggets of history we mention in the conversation:

•  Click to hear Marc Andreessen ask, “What is global hypermedia?” back in 1993. 
•  The famous whiteboard. They packed up the truck and moved to Beverly Mountain View 
•  Original Mozilla t-shirt designs.
•  20-year old photos of the NSCP team.

Summary:

Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he went on to work first at Spry (producing Internet in a Box) and then later at Microsoft, where he was a major developer of Internet Explorer for almost 15 years.

Chris tells us about developing the first Windows port of Mosaic, describes how he was one of the original champions of CSS as a technology, gives us more background about the evolution and life cycle of Internet Explorer, and even described his brief tenure working on Microsoft's first foray into search engine technology!

The quora thread I mention briefly can be found here.

Summary:

Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac while he was at the University of Kansas. This web browser was one of the first available and is still in use today.

In 1994 he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications (employee number 9) and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser.

He is also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser. While at Netscape, he also was a founding member of the HTML working group at the W3C and was a contributing author of the HTML 3.2 specification. He is a member of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.

Lou was also a co-founder of Epinions.com. He was the CEO of Memory Matrix, and when that company was purchased by Shutterfly, he served as Shutterfly’s Vice President of Engineering. He is currently the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zetta.net.

• More about Lynx here.
• Here is the famous fishcam!
• Here is the post we discuss where Lou lays out the reasoning behind the birth of the browser cookie.
• The birth of the <blink> tag.

Summary:

Netscape launches and is a smashing success. Jim Barksdale officially comes on as CEO. Netscape fights off legal threats from the NCSA and the University of Illinois. Despite it’s young age and lack of profits, Netscape files to go public in THE historic IPO of the era. Flush with cash, flush with fame, Netscape girds for battle with a new foe: Microsoft.

Bibliography:

•  http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/newsrelease1.html
•  http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1994-10-23/from-the-man-who-brought-you-silicon-graphics-dot-dot-dot
•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/
•  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Layout_engine_usage_share-2009-01-07.svg
•  Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft; Quittner, Joshua; Michelle Slatalla; Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998
•  http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984131,00.html
•  http://books.google.com/books?id=fzoEAAAAMBAJ&q=mundane+collection+of+not+entirely+debugged+device+drivers#v=snippet&q=mundane%20collection%20of%20not%20entirely%20debugged%20device%20drivers&f=false

Image Credit:

Assorted Materials

Summary:

Marc Andreessen heads out to Silicon Valley. He hooks up with startup legend Jim Clark. They decide to form a company, Netscape, to build upon Mosaic’s previous success. They “get the band back together” by recruiting most of the original Mosaic development team. Netscape Navigator is developed. The company hustles to establish itself before other, larger competitors catch on to the opportunity that is the web browser market.

Bibliography:

•  Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert H.; Wiley, 2nd Edition, 1999
•  The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams; Kaplan, David A.; William Morrow, 1999
•  Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim; Edwards, Own; St. Martin’s Press, 1999
•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/
•  http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ik5mk/iama_coauthor_of_the_first_widely_used_web/
•  http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html
•  Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft; Quittner, Joshua; Michelle Slatalla; Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998

Image Credit:

Start-Up: The Book

Summary:

Ayoung Marc Andreessen and a team of programmers at the NCSA on the campus of the University of Illinois create and publish the Mosaic browser, thereby creating the world wide web’s first killer app. Mosaic enjoys meteoric, overnight discuss. But the higher ups at the NCSA take the project away from the “kids” who created it. Examining Mosaic as the “trial run” for the product that would eventually be called Netscape Navigator.

Bibliography:

•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/
•  Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert H.; Wiley, 2nd Edition, 1999
•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1995/09/04/205894/index.htm
•  http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/14/business/6-tips-on-how-to-earn-52-million-by-age-24.html
•  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1994/12/12/80043/index.htm
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c8iWUh3Sv4
•  https://vimeo.com/7053726
•  http://www.thocp.net/biographies/andreesen_marc.htm
•  http://users.rcn.com/thomst/marca.html
•  Forbes ASAP, August 28, 1995, The Coming Software Shift, George Gilder
•  A Brief History of the Future: From Radio Days to Internet Years in a Lifetime; Naughton, John; Overlook Hardcover, 2000
•  http://www.mit.edu/~mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html
•  http://www.breakingwindows.net/1link10.htm
•  The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams; Kaplan, David A.; William Morrow, 1999
•  http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/shiftgg.html
•  Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim; Edwards, Own; St. Martin’s Press, 1999

Image Credit:

Kottke