The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web enables information to travel the globe in seconds and is now such a fundamental part of our lives that we would struggle to live without it. In addition to the times we personally access the web, there are also so many behind-the-scenes processes that require the internet. With something so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine a time without it, but the concept was first conceived in the late 1980’s.

It began in 1989 with a British scientist called Tim Berners-Lee who worked at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research on the France/Swiss border. He wanted to share information between scientists in institutes around the world.

He created a website which explained what the web was and how to set up a website. This was held on his own computer which is still at CERN and they have been working on a project to make the original website available. Details of the project can be found here.

In 1993, the source software that had been written at CERN was made freely available to the world, enabling the development of the web that we know today.

In 2004, Sir Tim Berners-Lee was knighted because of his huge contribution to our modern lives.