OpenAPI didn’t exist in the early 1990s, but the Web’s first standards—URLs, HTTP, MIME types, and simple server-side interfaces—introduced the core idea that an API can be described consistently. This chapter traces the roots of standardized API descriptions from 1990 to 1994.
Slack’s API feels modern, but its core ideas—URLs as interfaces, stateless requests, simple payloads, and predictable responses—trace back to the Web’s earliest HTTP experiments from 1990 to 1994.
From the earliest HTTP requests to CGI-driven endpoints, the Web’s 1990–1994 interface ideas quietly shaped the patterns that power today’s GitHub API automation—webhooks, CI triggers, and machine-to-machine workflows.
Long before Twilio made communications programmable, the early Web (1990–1994) established the practical building blocks of web APIs: URL addressing, request/response patterns, and simple server interfaces that taught developers how to “call” a service over HTTP.
A chronological look at 1990–1994, when the Web’s earliest HTTP interfaces and URL conventions laid the groundwork for modern web APIs—providing historical context for developer-first platforms like Stripe.
From HTTP’s earliest GET-only world to HTML forms, CGI, URL standardization, and early cookies, 1990–1994 quietly created the patterns that later became payment APIs and modern checkout flows.
From 1990 to 1994, the Web had URLs, MIME types, and early HTTP—but not browser-native audio/video. This chapter explains how those early interfaces shaped what HTML5 media APIs eventually became.
Server-Sent Events (SSE) arrived much later, but the need for streaming updates was visible from the Web’s earliest days. This chapter traces how HTTP’s simple request/response model (1990–1994) created both the problem—and the early experiments—that led to modern streaming web APIs.
In the Web’s first years, HTTP’s simple request/response model made “real-time” feel out of reach. This chapter traces the early interface patterns—HTTP/0.9, evolving headers, and CGI scripts—that set the stage for later solutions like the WebSocket API.
Long before Web Workers existed, early 1990s browsers and HTTP libraries faced the same problem: how to avoid locking up the user experience while fetching and processing network data. This chapter traces the API roots that later made true background processing possible.