Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Global Age

Mosaic — first mass-adoption graphical web browser

1993 AD · Transmission: Global
ComputingInventionNorth American

In January 1993, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, students at the University of Illinois's NCSA, launch Mosaic, the first web browser combining text and images on the same page with an accessible graphical interface. Before Mosaic, accessing the World Wide Web (created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989) required command-line tools. Mosaic's inline images, hyperlink navigation, and multi-platform availability eliminate the technical entry barrier; web traffic multiplies exponentially in the following months. Andreessen later founds Netscape (1994). Mosaic marks the beginning of the commercial Internet era.

InstitutionNCSA — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Historical regionUSA
Primary sourceAndreessen, M.; Bina, E. — "NCSA Mosaic: A Global Hypermedia System" (1994)
Secondary sourceReid, R. — Architects of the Web (1997)
Original languageEnglish
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