Invention of WWW and E-commerce

 

(Shutterstock, 2022)

What is the history of e-commerce?

The history of ecommerce started over 40 years ago, when the introduction of early technology like Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and teleshopping in the 1970s paved the way for the modern-day ecommerce store as we know it today. 

The history of ecommerce is closely intertwined with the history of the internet. Online shopping became possible when the internet was opened to the public in 1991. Amazon was one of the first ecommerce sites in the US to start selling products online and thousands of businesses have followed since. 

The convenience, safety, and enjoyable user experience of ecommerce have improved exponentially since the inception of online shopping. In his article, we will discuss some of the key players and milestones of ecommerce. (Miva. 2023)

When was online shopping invented? 

Online shopping was invented in pioneered in 1979 by entrepreneur Michael Aldrich in the United Kingdom. Aldrich was able to connect a modified domestic television to a real-time multi-user transaction processing computer via a telephone line. The system was marketed in 1980 and offered as business-to-business systems that were then sold in the UK, Ireland, and Spain. 

 Book Stacks Unlimited, an online bookstore created by Charles M. Stack in 1992, was one of the earliest consumer shopping experiences. Stack’s store began as a dial-up bulletin board three years before Amazon was founded. In 1994, Book Stacks Unlimited moved to the Internet as Books.com and was eventually acquired by Barnes & Noble. (Miva. 2023)

When did the World Wide Web come into the picture?

In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau published a proposal to build a “Hypertext project” called “World Wide Web.” The inspiration for this project was modeled after the Dynatex SGML reader licensed by CERN. 

That same year, Berners-Lee created the first web server and wrote the first web browser. Shortly thereafter, he went on to debut the web on August 6, 1991 as a publicly-available service on the Internet. When Berners-Lee decided he would take on the task of marrying hypertext to the Internet, the process led him to develop URL, HTML and HTTP. 

In 1991, the National Science Foundation lifted its restrictions on commercial use of the NET, causing online shopping to grow exponentially. In September 1995, the NSF began charging a fee for registering domain names. The number of domain names quickly grew to two million by 1993. By this time, the NSF’s role in the Internet came to an end and a lot of the oversight shifted to the commercial sector. 

From the beginning, there were many concerns over the safety of  online shopping. However, the development of a security protocol, Secure Socket Layers (SSL)—an encryption certificate created by Netscape in 1994, provided a safe means to transmit data over the internet. Web browsers were able to identify whether a site had an authenticated SSL and, based on that, determine whether or not a site could be trusted. 

Now, SSL encryption protocol is a vital part of web security, and version 3.0 has become the standard for most web servers today. (Miva. 2023)

(Alamy, 2021)

References:

(Miva. 2023. The History Of Ecommerce: How Did It All Begin?. [ONLINE] Available at: https://blog.miva.com/the-history-of-ecommerce-how-did-it-all-begin. [Accessed 17 January 2023]). 

Internet world wide web concept earth stock illustration 88829890 (no date) Shutterstock. Available at: http://shutterstock.7eer.net/c/77643/108110/1305?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shutterstock.com%2Fimage-illustration%2Finternet-world-wide-web-concept-earth-88829890&subId1=88829890 (Accessed: January 24, 2023). 

Limited, A. (no date) Editorial use only. this image may not be used to state or imply endorsement by CERN of any product, activity or service Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955 stock photo, Alamy. Available at: https://alamy-ltd.ewrvdi.net/c/77643/748811/10905?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alamy.com%2Feditorial-use-only-this-image-may-not-be-used-to-state-or-imply-endorsement-by-cern-of-any-product-activity-or-service-tim-berners-lee-born-1955-image335014669.html (Accessed: January 24, 2023).