Six years ago, scientists at the European Lab for Particle Research, began transmitting their ideas globally in an entirely new way.

Using computers they could transfer text, pictures, and sounds around the world instantaneously with simple codes developed by a computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee. The system also allowed direct links to articles stored on other computers. In August of 1991, when the preliminary software specifications for the World Wide Web were posted in various Usenet newsgroups, few media companies took notice-after all their future lay with interactive television.

The Web, in 1992, was still a tool for the academic and research communities, though its development grew exponentially there. This humble section of the Internet was launched into the mainstream when it became truly multimedia with the development of a browser that allowed the immediate display of images and sounds on Web pages. The browser, called Mosaic, was co-created in February of 1993 by billionaire-to-be Marc Andeerssen, while working at the National Center for SuperComputing Applications.

A month later only 0.1 percent of the U.S.' main Internet backbone was devoted to Web traffic; six months later Web traffic had increased one-hundred times. The major media outlets finally began to take notice of the World Wide Web during this period.

In March of 1994, the Web surpassed all other traffic on the Internet, and Andeerssen left NSCA to create the most popular Web browser on the Net: the Netscape Navigator. During the same month, the Toronto entertainment weekly eye WEEKLY agreed to let one of its writers, K.K. Campbell, move the paper online. The Web site, which grew to 300 MB by October 1996, was Canada's first publication online.

By June 1994, three months before the release of Netscape's Navigator, there were 1,500 Web servers worldwide. Sixteen Canadian newspapers were online by August of 1995 -- only five percent of the world's online publications. One year later, over 75 million pages of information existed on 90,000 Web servers. By the end of 1996 nearly 800 American newspapers were on the Web, while Canada had almost 130 newspapers online.