British computer scientist who proposed and built the Web
Robert Cailliau
Belgian engineer who helped promote it at CERN
Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina
Wrote the Mosaic browser in 1993
Plate 091
1989–1991
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland
No photograph is shown for this exhibition. The museum displays an image only where it can show the object honestly.
About this date
Tim Berners-Lee proposed the Web at CERN in March 1989. The first website went live in 1991. CERN placed the technology in the public domain in April 1993.
About credit
The Web is not the same as the Internet. It is a system of linked documents that runs on it.
Chapter II
The world before
Life before the World Wide Web
The Internet existed, but using it needed technical knowledge and different tools for each service.
II
The human achievement
How it came about
Berners-Lee wrote HTML, URLs and HTTP, built the first browser and server on a NeXT computer, and CERN made the technology royalty-free. Mosaic (1993) brought images and ease of use.
III
Understanding the invention
How it works
The World Wide Web, explained in two steps.
01
Step 01 of 02
Links
Each page has an address (URL) and can point to others.
Links
Browser and server
IV
The transformation
What changed for humanity
Information
Access to knowledge on a global scale.
Commerce and society
Online shopping, social media and misinformation.
It made the internet usable by everyone. Search, shopping, social media and online learning grew out of it.
V
Before and after
Life before and after The World Wide Web
Before
A trip to the library.
After
A search in seconds.
On larger screens, drag the divider (or use the arrow keys) to give more room to the world before or after.
VI
Its legacy
What came after
MHI 091
The World Wide Web
Beyond the collection
Search engines
Google began in 1998.
Beyond the collection
Mobile apps
Services on a screen in your hand.
VII
Human stories
The people and the moments
“Vague, but exciting”
Berners-Lee’s manager, Mike Sendall, wrote these words on the 1989 proposal. The document is kept at CERN.
Where accounts differ, this museum follows the documented record and says so.
