world

world

1. the earth as a planet, esp including its inhabitants

2. mankind; the human race

3. the universe or cosmos; everything in existence

4. a complex united whole regarded as resembling the universe

5. any star or planet, esp one that might be inhabited

6. an area, sphere, or realm considered as a complete environment

7. Logic See possible world

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

world

[wərld]

(relativity)

Pertaining to Lorentz transformations and four-dimensional space-time, rather than rotations and three-dimensional space, as in world scalar, world vector, world line.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The World

The first ISP to offer service to the general public. Operated by the Software Tool & Die company, a software consulting company in Boston, Massachusetts, The World debuted in 1989 when the Internet was still an academic and government research network. Although ISPs at the time charged organizations hundreds and thousands of dollars per month for high speed access, The World offered service to anyone for $20.

Too Much In-House Power
The idea of offering Internet access arose because the company's Sun server with close to a gigabyte of storage was more computing power than needed. After obtaining a half dozen analog modems and some phone lines, The World started out by taking requests and manually copying documents from the Internet that customers would subsequently retrieve by dialing up The World server. Within its first year, Software Tool & Die obtained access to the UUNET ISP and was able to offer anyone direct access to the Internet. See World Wide Web and ISP.

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