FFITHW: A History of the Scheme

Pernicious plans devised by devious dastards? Not at all- the scheme we’re talking about is one you see every day. Behold!

The circled part is known as the scheme. This particular scheme stands for Hypertest Transfer Protocol Secure, a more secure way to send information than the plain old HTTP we knew and loved. Have you ever wondered why it appears at the forefront of all your web pages, even when the iconic ‘www’ is omitted? And what on earth is the deal with those slashes?

Those questions can be, and have been, answered by the literal creator of the internet. No, not Al Gore. That honor belongs to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he was the one who decided the majority of the internet naming conventions we still use to this day.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was the engineer who was first able to execute the creation of a worldwide file sharing system, and his long career could probably have its own post. While designing the syntax of web URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier), he copied the file structure used by a computer company called Apollo. They used a double slash to indicate a network path, which he then used to separate the web domain from the transfer protocol servers ask the client computer for (HTTP).

The colon is a modifier that specifies what server port your computer needs to talk to. It’s often left blank as the ‘HTTP’ part already has a default port which is what’s used. It shouldn’t really even need to be there. The use of the colon and file hierarchy is explained in much more technical terms in a paper Tim wrote on URI syntax.

Basically, the format of the scheme exists because it was cobbled together from old naming conventions and perhaps a lack of understanding of how well-used (and scrutinized) his system would become. Amusingly, Tim regrets his decision to structure the internet this way. He believes that it is unnecessarily complicated and given the chance to do it again, he would redesign URIs, remove the ‘www’, and yes, even take away the double slash we’ve known for so long. Alas, it’s too late for him to change his creation any longer.