12/6/2013 6:04:00 AM
December 8, 2013, marks the 20th anniversary of the first mention of the Mosaic Internet browser in the New York Times. Mosaic was the first popular browser, and it helped launch the Internet as a tool for businesses and for personal use.
Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) by CS alumni Marc Andreessen (BS CS ’94) and Eric Bina (BS CS ’86, MS CS ’88). Though the New York Times story came out in December, Mosaic had been released to the world earlier in 1993. This story hints at some of the implications for the importance of web browsers in general, while also showing how new and exotic they were at the time to the general public.
Andreessen was recently recognized for his work as co-author of Mosaic with the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.