Today in media history: Web introduced to the public

Four events that happened on this date and a trivia question.

August 6, 1945
On this date the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. About a year later The New Yorker devotes its entire issue to the story “Hiroshima” by John Hersey. He later publishes it as a book.

August 6, 1956
The DuMont television network airs its final program after going bankrupt. From 1946 until 1956 the DuMont network was considered the fourth major television network. DuMont owned three TV stations in the late 1940s and early 1950s: New York’s WABD; Washington, DC’s W3XWT; and Pittsburgh’s WDTV. The Walter Compton News was the first news program on the DuMont network. Other news shows from DuMont included: Camera Headlines, I.N.S. Telenews, Newsweek Analysis, and the DuMont Evening News. 

August 6, 1991

The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere….The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!

On this date Tim Berners-Lee publicly introduces the project that creates the World Wide Web. He first proposed the Web in a memo to his colleagues at CERN on March 12, 1989. Posted above is an excerpt from his 1991 note to the alt.hypertext newsgroup.     

(Video: “World Wide Web Turns 25: Interview with inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee”)

Visitors to the Web sites of newspapers owned by News Corp. will have to start coughing up fees to read the news within the next year, Chairman Rupert Murdoch said. It’s risky for the company because a pay barrier could drive away Web traffic – and with it, advertising revenue. “You don’t want to be the first guy to put up a big pay wall when all other roads to content are open,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell Inc. Yet it is a move many news outlets will closely watch as they, too, consider charging users as the decline in print ad revenue far outpaces the growth of online ad dollars.