The British creator of the World Wide Web (WWW), Tim Berners-Lee, published a link to the . on August 6, 1991 first website in an online discussion group. The first website was that of the European research institute CERN in Geneva, where Berners-Lee worked.
The physicist came up with the idea for the WWW back in 1989. “Your proposal is vague but exciting,” replied his boss at CERN. Berners-Lee wanted to connect computers in a new way via the Internet, so that scientific information was more easily available. Before that, Berners-Lee used hyperlinks that linked documents and information.The Internet had been around since late 60s, but was mainly focused on exchanging messages between computers.
Third website was Dutch
The Dutch also played a role in the development of the WWW. The third website ever was in February 1992 that of the Dutch scientific institute Nikhef. Researcher Willem van Leeuwen from Nikhef previously attended a workshop by Berners-Lee about the WWW. In early 1992 he made a number of scripts to make Nikhef information accessible via the WWW.
“It wasn’t until it was installed and I saw it that I understood how it worked,” Van Leeuwen said later. Berners-Lee used his scripts to convince skeptical CERN employees of the Web’s qualities.
It took a few more years for the WWW to really break through with consumers and it was no longer the domain of scientists and computer enthusiasts. The WWW currently has more than 1.8 billion pages.
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Criticism of tech giants
Berners-Lee is still working on the future of the web and regularly expresses criticism the influence of large tech companies. The 65-year-old scientist is currently working on the project Solid where data is stored decentrally instead of on central platforms.
The web pioneer was given the title ‘Sir’ in his own country for his invention.
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WWW source code sold
The original source code of the WWW was recently auctioned for 4.6 million euros sold as a non-fungible token (NFT), a non-exchangeable attribute that guarantees ownership of digital objects.
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