Web Browsers are the window to the World Wide Web. Even before graphical windows existed there was a variety of text browsers available for the user to access the Web.
Arachne
On DOS systems, Arachne was an internet suite. It contained a graphical web browser, an email client and a dialer. The user could also browse his local drives. Arachne supported only a subset of stylesheets and html.
Lynx
Lynx is the oldest browser that’s still in general use and active development; It’s first release was in 1992. Being a text browser it can not display any images or CSS. Despite its age it is still usable for many purposes. You can even edit wikipedia pages with it.
Minnesota Internet Users Essential Tool (MINUET)
MINUET is an integrated internet package for DOS Operating Systems on IBM-compatible computers. It needs at least 384 KiB of RAM and can also run on an original 4.77 MHz IBM PC. It has a GUI interface and is capable of multitasking.
NCSA Mosaic
The Mosaic Browser is the first browser with modern inline image support. It understands many protocols (Archie, FTP, gopher, HTTP, NNTP, telnet, WAIS) and is the predecessor of the famous Netscape Navigator and the Internet Explorer. Mosaic greatly influenced the public use of the internet; it led to the internet boom of the 1990s.
w3m
The text-based browser w3m is capable of viewing images on suitable terminals. It tries to present the web page in its most natural form and supports tables, ssl, frames and colors.