By Yogesh Kumar Goyal

The internet is such a treasure trove of knowledge and entertainment that, sitting in one corner, you can tour the entire world. It would not be wrong to say that the core formula that gathers all types of important information from across the world and brings it onto the screen of a computer or mobile kept in a small closed room—WWW (World Wide Web)—has become an integral part of our daily lives today. This very word is typed countless times on millions of computers around the world every day, but have you ever wondered when and how this window that introduces us to the magical world of the internet called 'WWW' came into existence?

In the year 1989, this magical word 'WWW' was given birth by Tim Berners-Lee, a graduate from Queen's College, Oxford. Whatever methods are currently used to connect to or create a webpage, Berners' brain is behind them. Born in London on June 8, 1955, Berners-Lee graduated from Queen's College, Oxford in 1976, and during that time, at the age of just 21, he built a small computer set for himself. The initial idea related to 'WWW' suddenly came to Berners-Lee's mind in 1980. At that time, he was working as a software engineer in a company. Then he developed a program called 'Enquire' to interconnect various files present in the computer. He used certain special code numbers to open his documents and files on the computer, and his method worked successfully on the computer, but he determined to do something beyond this.

In fact, Berners-Lee wanted to create a global project that could connect all the world's computers through a comprehensive information system, and he succeeded in his objective. He succeeded in connecting people across the globe to a vast network of information through the internet. In this way, 'WWW' began on the internet in 1991. To honor Tim Berners-Lee for his creativity in developing an internet-based communication system, 'World Wide Web Day' is celebrated every year on August 1st. In 1993, along with 'text', the transmission of pictures and graphics also started on the internet, which gradually led to an increase in its popularity. Today, the popularity of the internet can be gauged from the fact that the number of internet users across the world is in the hundreds of millions.

Although everyone around the world today is familiar with the fact that the internet is a treasure trove of knowledge and entertainment, you must also know how to search this treasure. In fact, there are countless pages filled with important information on a single topic on the World Wide Web; if you do not even know how to search for information relevant to you among them, then of what use is all this to you? Suppose you need information on a topic and you also know some websites related to it, but if you do not find information relevant to you on those websites, what will you do then? Your difficulty is made easy by the internet search engine. Internet search engines help you whenever you search for anything on the internet. Whatever topic you want information about, after typing its name in the toolbar of the internet search engine and clicking once, it opens up a multitude of pages related to that topic in front of you, and in this way, you can easily fulfill your need.

In fact, a search engine is a program that operates under various programs and holds millions and billions of pages of all websites available on the internet within itself. Not only this, the number of these pages increases day by day. It is a special web-based site with the help of which you can easily reach the information gathered on any topic. Whenever you type a word or sentence in a search engine wanting information related to it, the search engine prepares a detailed list of pages related to that word or sentence and presents it before you, from which you can obtain the information you need. 'Google', 'Yahoo', etc., are some such search engines that are famous worldwide today and are hit millions and billions of times daily. If you want to find information related to a specific topic, you can use symbols like +, -, _, etc., along with the typed words to refine your search. For example, if you want the webpage searched by you to contain the names of both Indira and Rajiv, then type Indira+Rajiv in the toolbar of the search engine and press enter; the information requested by you will be in front of you in a matter of moments.

(The author is a senior journalist active in journalism for 36 years and author of several books including 'Sagar Se Antariksh Tak: Bharat Ki Raksha Kranti')

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