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The History of the World-Wide Web

The Idea Behind the Web

Tim Berners-Lee

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was a computer scientist working at CERN, a large, international science lab in Switzerland.

Tim and the other scientists at CERN were frustrated by how difficult it was to share their research and access the research of others.

Tim had the idea that research documents could be stored in a standard way, HTML, and connected to each other by hyperlinks, letting you jump from one document to another with just a click, making information easy to find and share.

The First Web Page

The first web page

On his Next computer, Tim Berners-Lee began writing the computer programs needed to make his ideas a reality.

By December 1990, he had the first working webpages, viewable using the first web browser. The pages were very simple - just text with links. You can browse a copy of these pages here!

Web Technologies

To make a working web site, Tim Berners-Lee had to create several important technologies that are still in use today:

  • HTML - A simple language to create webpages
  • HTTP - The protocol (rules) used to request and send webpages
  • Web Server - A computer that can deliver webpages when requested
  • Web Browser - An application to view and interact with webpages

A Free and Open Web

Tim Berners-Lee decided chose not to patent any of his ideas or code, instead making them available to anyone for free. This generous decision allowed the web to grow quickly across the world.

What started as a tool for scientists to share research, quickly became something that changed how everyone shares information, learns, shops and communicates.