Although the internet was introduced in 1982, the World Wide Web did not become popular until the mid-1990s.  One of the primary reasons the internet lacked popularity was the difficult, technical nature of early web browsers.  An easy-to-use web browser was finally released in 1993 and changed the popularity of the internet forever.

On this day, April 22nd, in 1993, version 1 of Mosaic web browser was released.  Mosaic was developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and is characterized by a simple, user-friendly interface, as well as being the first browser to include images displayed inline.  Although the web browser had two predecessors, Mosaic’s simple, intuitive nature made the internet more accessible to the general public. There is a fairly large consensus that Mosaic was responsible for popularizing the World Wide Web.

Mosaic was discontinued in 1997, but the web browser still has great influence today.  Most of today’s popular web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox share many of Mosaic’s original characteristics.