Marc Andreessen

NCSA Mosaic

NCSA Mosaic (1993) was the first browser to display images inline with text, submit forms, and explore collaborative annotation. Developed at NCSA by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, it launched in January 1993 as alpha/beta 0.5, reached version 1.0 in April, and shipped to Windows, Mac, and Amiga by October. Its blue/purple link convention and cross-platform ports catalysed explosive growth—from 50 to 10,000 websites and from 1% to 25% of internet users within a year. Collaborative annotation remained unshipped. It established the visual and functional grammar of the web—but offered no security model, no dynamic updating, and no scripting.