Who invented the World Wide Web?
British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland. The first website went online in 1991.
Berners-Lee proposed a system to help scientists at CERN share information using hypertext, documents linked to each other. By the end of 1990, he had created the three key technologies of the web: HTML, the language for writing web pages, URLs, the addresses for pages, and HTTP, the rules for transferring them. He also built the first web browser and web server.
The web is different from the internet. The internet is the global network connecting computers, while the web is a system of linked pages and resources that runs on top of it. Email and many apps use the internet without being part of the web.
A gift to the world
In April 1993, CERN made the web's technology available royalty-free, allowing anyone to use it. This decision helped the web grow explosively. Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994 and was knighted in 2004. He received the Turing Award in 2016.
Did You Know?
The first website, info.cern.ch, explained what the web was and how to use it. CERN restored it online in 2013.