Home › News › The Web
Happy Birthday: World Wide Web turns 20
British engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) unveiled a project for organizing information on August 6, 1991. He called it the World Wide Web and posted a short summary on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, marking the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet. Today, the World Wide Web is thus 20 years old.
The World Wide Web, or just the Web as we call it today, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. In essence, users can view web pages that contain text, images, videos, and/or other multimedia with a Web browser. Navigation between them occurs via hyperlinks.
Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, used concepts from earlier hypertext systems to write a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. In November 1990, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed to use hypertext to link and access information of various kinds.
The project was publicly introduced in December 1990 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first Web browser (which was a web editor as well), the first web server, and the first web pages, which of course described the project itself.
Of the various individual projects that went into building the Internet, the World Wide Web is to this day one of the most significant by far. Thank you Berners-Lee!
User Comments (18)
Post a comment|
Leeky
on August 6, 2011 3:04 PM |
Happy birthday internet! |
|
Artix
on August 6, 2011 3:30 PM |
Happy Bda Interwebz, hope that all the trolling on ya will stop! |
|
tomcolgan
on August 6, 2011 5:20 PM |
20years where does the time go... |
|
abe10tiger
on August 6, 2011 7:22 PM |
Happy B-day! |
|
Guest
on August 6, 2011 7:49 PM |
Anyone remember NCSA Mosaic browser? |
|
Psywar
on August 6, 2011 8:20 PM |
Thank you Berners-Lee! |
|
fpsgamerJR62
on August 6, 2011 10:25 PM |
Imagine that! In the 20 years since its inception, the World Wide Web has had such a massive impact on our lives. |
|
Archean
on August 7, 2011 1:39 AM |
the World Wide Web has had such a massive impact on our lives Aside from that Web's greatest achievement has been spreading pron to every corner of the world. But anyway, its been interesting two decades, I wonder what it will look like in the next two. |
|
Guest
on August 7, 2011 1:59 AM |
I just realized that I'm older than the world wide web! |
|
Rancid
on August 7, 2011 2:13 AM |
Yeah!! I'm older that the internet Rancid~ |
|
HiDDeNMisT
on August 7, 2011 2:25 AM |
Yeah!! I'm older that the internet Rancid~ LOL its funny cuz i am to. |
|
foreverzero89
on August 7, 2011 8:06 AM |
Archean said: the World Wide Web has had such a massive impact on our lives Aside from that Web's greatest achievement has been spreading pron to every corner of the world. But anyway, its been interesting two decades, I wonder what it will look like in the next two. thats what he created the web for. |
|
Guest
on August 7, 2011 10:41 AM |
"Thank you Berners-Lee!" I hope he earned at least a little money.... It is sad and shocking than I could tell my childrens than I lived in a word without internet and now I live in the internet :-S |
|
Wendig0
on August 7, 2011 11:54 AM |
Rancid said: Yeah!! I'm older that the internet Rancid~ You're a child of the 60's? |
|
Per Hansson
on August 7, 2011 12:02 PM |
Rancid & HiDDeNMisT; The Internet was first utilized in 1969 so unless you are over 42 years old you are not older than the Internet |
|
Benny26
on August 8, 2011 9:51 AM |
Happy Birthday Internet....You've simultaneously brought the world closer together and pushed the world further apart. Here's to the next 20 years. |
|
learninmypc
on August 8, 2011 9:59 AM |
20years where does the time go... Too true |
|
Guest
on August 9, 2011 1:11 PM |
The Internet is since 1969, and really was only acessable by the techies. The WWW and utilizing names for adresses is what is 20 years old. |
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
-
iOS 5.1.1 untethered jailbreak tool released, supports 4S, iPad 3
-
After five days, Facebook ranks as worst IPO flop of the decade
-
Rumor: Windows 8 RC will launch June 1, will ship with Adobe Flash
-
Rumor: AMD "Piledriver" FX CPU production to begin Q3 2012
-
Is Apple's USB wall adapter really worth $29?
Editors' Laptop Picks
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and tech breaking news.
