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Ty_S
Moderator (Retired)
Moderator (Retired)

Happy Internaut Day!

25 years ago today Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir Tim, of course) and CERN plugged in the phone line, pressed publish, and introduced the World Wide Web to the public.  

Working at CERN, Berners-Lee paired the existing internet technology with hypertext, with the idea of making it a web of information accessible to everyone. And on 23rd August, 1991, it was.

Tim Berners-Lee.Tim Berners-Lee.

Despite some confusion the Internet and World Wide Web are actually two different things. The internet is a network of computers that are connected and the World Wide Web refers to the web pages found on this network of computers. Berners-Lee created the world’s first browser which allows users to easily search through all this information and view it.

You can still visit the very first webpage, which is a beginner’s guide detailing what the web is,  how to use it, and all the technical project details of its construction:

http://info.cern.ch.

It’s definitely worth a visit if you’re interested in the more of the story behind the birth of the web.

25 years on, it’s fair to say the project has been a success.

 Sir Tim Berners-Lee is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which works to develop the Web, and is an activist for freedom of access for the internet.

Globally we’re amongst over 3 billion people making use of the World Wide Web, which has changed so much since those first web pages.

Remarkably, about that half that number is active on Facebook each month.  

Although, saying that, maybe it hasn’t changed that much. The first places I went on the web were chat rooms like this…

The Virgin.net Community, 1999.The Virgin.net Community, 1999.

So let’s raise a virtual glass to the World Wide Web and Sir Tim. Thanks for the Web, and here’s to another 25 years!

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