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The Finns Who Invented the Graphical Browser

Posted by kdawson on from the something-in-the-water dept.

waderoush writes "If you thought Mosaic was the first graphical Web browser, think again. In their first major interview, three of the four Finnish software engineers behind Erwise — a point-and-click graphical Web browser for the X Window system — describe the creation of their program in 1991-1992, a full year before Marc Andreessen's Mosaic (which, of course, evolved into Netscape). Kim Nyberg, Kari Sydänmaanlakka, and Teemu Rantanen, with their fellow Helsinki University of Technology student Kati Borgers (nee Suominen), gave Erwise features such as text searching and the ability to load multiple Web pages that wouldn't be seen in other browsers until much later. The three engineers, who today work for the architectural software firm Tekla, say they never commercialized the project because there was no financing — Finland was in a deep recession at the time and lacked a strong venture capital or angel investing market. Otherwise, the Web revolution might have begun a year earlier."

11 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Correction. by jcr · · Score: 5, Informative

    The first web browser of all was WorldWideWeb.app, and it was a NeXTSTEP program. It was graphical from the beginning.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:Correction. by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 4, Informative
      This page seems to supply the key point that's missing from the linked article:

      Erwise was a popular web browser in the early days of the World Wide Web. At the time of its release in April 1992, one month prior to ViolaWWW, it was the world's first web browser with a graphical user interface for non-NeXT computers.

      --
      This guy's the limit!
    2. Re:Correction. by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      WorldWideWeb.app was the first written for NeXt (and first one, period). Erwise was was the first one written for Unix. And Cello (or Mosaic?) was the first one written for Windows. You can try and parse it all you like, but you'll still have to give an American at least some of the credit. Sorry to spoil the pissing contest.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    3. Re:Correction. by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Informative

      P.S.

      >>>14.4K, maybe 28.8K... I forget. Went to cable around then and never looked back

      Lucky dude. I was using dialup modems right up to 2007, when they finally installed DSL for $15 a month. I could have gone with cable as early as 1997, but the $120 cost was outrageous. Even now I think $50 a month is too high, and I wish Comcast would offer a lower price tier.

      If anybody cares (and they probably don't) the official V. standards are:

      300 bit/s 300 baud
      1200 bit/s 600 baud
      2400 bit/s 600 baud or 1200 baud
      4800 bit/s 1200 baud
      9600 bit/s 2400 baud

      14400 bit/s 2400 baud
      28800 bit/s 3200 baud
      33600 bit/s 3429 baud
      56000 bit/s (digital) 8000 baud

      With compression most of those modems could get more than 3 times their true speed (i.e. 56000 acted like 150,000+). I've owned all of those except the 300 and 4800 modems. I don't know anyone who had 4800. It's interesting how most of the speed increase came from, not increasing baud, but new modulation methods that could better tolerate the noise.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  2. Hypercard by MrEricSir · · Score: 1, Informative

    Why not just say Hypercard was the first graphical browser?

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
    1. Re:Hypercard by Calsar · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because it wasn't. The first hypertext system was the Hypertext Editing System created in 1967. The first graphical browser with point and click interface was the NLS system which was part of the Augment project created in 1968 by Doug Engelbart. There weren't any point and click inteface before then because he also created the mouse as part of that project.

  3. Whoa! Andressen != MOSAIC by GPLDAN · · Score: 2, Informative

    Eric Bina wrote just as much code as Andressen. And Andressen later had help from several other UI students.

    Also, nobody thinks Mosaic was the first. If anything, the card these Finns trump is Tim Bruce, who wrote Cello.

    This is worse than Bill Gates inventing the personal computer, when all he did was steal CP/M. Let's do a little better at getting history correct.

    1. Re:Whoa! Andressen != MOSAIC by deKernel · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is worse than Bill Gates inventing the personal computer, when all he did was steal CP/M. Let's do a little better at getting history correct.

      No offense, but Bill Gates did not steal CP/M. He had the smarts and vision to purchase a product called 86-DOS when other people thought that home computers would be nothing but toys.

      Now I say this as someone who is typically critical of shear number of flaws in Windows and the BILLIONS of dollars spent to develop that ship-wreck. You might not like his products, but you can't argue with his early business savvy.

  4. Re:Nothing at CERN? by Korin43 · · Score: 2, Informative

    They used WorldWideWeb.app which is for NeXT.

  5. Re:Depends on what you mean by "Graphical" by Dishevel · · Score: 1, Informative

    Gopher RULED!

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  6. Re:Depends on what you mean by "Graphical" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The real title of "first graphical browser" goes to whichever application first displayed inline graphics on a page.

    That would be the browser that invented the <img> tag.

    Mosaic.