NCSA Mosaic

Put the pictures in the page, and the web took off

Shut down
19902026

Mosaic was not the first web browser, but it was the first to put images inline with the text instead of opening them in a separate window, and the first that ordinary people could install and use. Released from a university lab in 1993, it made the web visible. Four years later it was finished, beaten by Netscape, which its own authors had left to build.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 1992
  2. December 1992 Launch
    Development begins at NCSA

    Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina start work at the University of Illinois.

  3. 1993
  4. 23 January 1993 Launch
    Mosaic is released

    The first browser to show images inline with the text.

  5. 1994
  6. 4 April 1994 Decline
    Andreessen leaves to found Netscape

    He takes much of the team with him.

  7. October 1994 Peak
    On the cover of Wired

    Mosaic is the face of the web going mainstream.

  8. 1995
  9. 16 August 1995 Legal
    Microsoft licenses Spyglass Mosaic

    It becomes Internet Explorer. Both sides of the browser war start here.

  10. 1997
  11. 7 January 1997 Shutdown
    NCSA ends development and support

    Almost all users had already moved to Netscape.

The site through time

Browse ncsa.illinois.edu as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

National Center for Supercomputing Applications 1992–1997 Founded University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Development and support at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications ended in January 1997. Mosaic had already lost almost all of its users to Netscape Navigator, which was built by the people who had written Mosaic.

Our analysis: Mosaic was a research project that accidentally started an industry, and it was beaten by its own authors. Marc Andreessen left to found Netscape, took the approach with him, and shipped faster than a university lab could.

History [edit]

Images, in the page

Development began at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, at the University of Illinois, in December 1992, and the first release came in January 1993. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina wrote it.

Browsers already existed. WorldWideWeb, Erwise and ViolaWWW came first. What Mosaic did was make the web look like something rather than a document: it displayed images inline with the text instead of opening them in a separate window, it ran on ordinary personal computers, it installed without expertise, and it supported HTTP, FTP, NNTP and Gopher so it was useful from the first day.

That combination is why the web, rather than Gopher or anything else, became the thing everyone meant by "the internet". Wired put it on the cover in October 1994.

Beaten by its own authors

Andreessen left for California, co-founded what became Netscape, and hired much of the Mosaic team. Netscape Navigator shipped in late 1994 and took the market within months, because a funded company iterating weekly beats a university lab.

The lineage kept going in a second direction too. Spyglass licensed the Mosaic name and technology from the university, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic in 1995, and that became Internet Explorer. Both sides of the first browser war descend from the same lab.

Retired

NCSA maintained Mosaic until 7 January 1997, by which point it had a tiny fraction of its users left, and then stopped.

Four years is short. In them, the web went from a physics document system to something with a front page.

Similar projects

Netscape Navigator The browser that opened the web 1994–2008 Internet Explorer The browser that won the war and lost the peace 1995–2022 ICQ The messenger that gave you a number 1996–2024 Skype The app that made calling the world free 2003–2025 Winamp It really whips the llama's ass 1997–2013 MySpace A place for friends 2003–now

Sources [edit]

  1. The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun Wired 1 October 1994 [archived]
  2. NCSA Mosaic National Center for Supercomputing Applications 7 January 1997 [archived]

Last verified: 13 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).