Today most of us spend hours a day leaping between different websites looking for information. All of those billions of pages that are now publicly available started with just one.
On this day 23 years ago, Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World Wide Web (WWW) project and it went live to the world.
It is only fitting that the first web pages Berners-Lee posted discuss his project and how it aimed to use links to access other information. Up until that point, the Internet was used for sending information between individual computers. Berners-Lee wanted to create a web of information anyone could access.
Berners-Lee first proposed the creation to colleagues at CERN, an international particle physics lab in Switzerland, on March 12, 1989.
"The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news and documentation," Berners-Leewrote in a note posted to several Internet newsgroups, including one for hypertext enthusiasts called alt.hypertext on Aug. 6, 1991. "We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!"
Berners-Lee even wrote that others who are interested in using the code should contact him.
The posting of the page 23 years ago marked a major milestone for Berners-Lee, who began working on the project in 1980 when it was called the Enquire project.
While the Internet we know today is far more comprehensive and sophisticated than the onefirst made public 23 years ago, it basically operates on the same principles – using hypertext as a communications component. It's the reason why you can be reading this article right now and then click here to read the note posted by Berners-Lee in 1991.
