A New Way to Share Information
While the internet provided the infrastructure, it lacked an easy way for ordinary people to access information. That changed in 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory), proposed a system for interlinked documents accessible via a “browser.”
Berners-Lee’s vision was to create a universal information space where anyone could share and access documents over the internet.
Key Inventions
HTML (HyperText Markup Language): The formatting language for web pages
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol): The system for transmitting web pages
URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The web address system
In 1991, the first website and web server went live at CERN. The site explained the World Wide Web project and how to create web pages.
The Mosaic Browser
In 1993, a team at the University of Illinois released Mosaic, the first web browser with a graphical interface. It displayed images alongside text, making the web intuitive and accessible to the general public.
Mosaic was a sensation. Within a year, web traffic grew by over 300,000%. The web was no longer a niche tool for scientists – it was a phenomenon.
The Web Goes Public
In 1994, CERN and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) placed the web technology in the public domain, allowing anyone to use it without licensing fees. This decision ensured the web’s explosive growth and prevented it from being controlled by a single company.
From 1993 to 1995, the number of websites grew from under 100 to over 25,000.