WHERE DID THE WEB COME FROM?
Appropriately enough, the idea for the Web came from scientists—just as had the original idea for the Internet.
In 1989 Tim Bemers-Lee, a physicist at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN), proposed the concept of the Web as a system for transferring ideas and research among scientists in the high- energy-physics community.
Berners-Lee’s original proposal defined a very simple implementation that used hypertext but did not include multimedia capabilities. Something very much like this was introduced on Steve Jobs’s NeXT computer system in 1990. The NeXT implementation allowed users to create, edit, view, and transmit hypertext documents over the Internet. The system was demonstrated for CERN committees and attendees at the Hypertext ‘91 conference.
In 1992 CERN began publicizing the World Wide Web (WWW) project and encouraging the development of Web servers at laboratories and academic institutions around the world. At the same time, CERN promoted the development of WWW clients (browsers) for a range of computer systems including X Windows (Unix), the Apple Macintosh, and PC/Windows. (Today, the two most popular and useful of these browsers are Netscape Communicate and Micorosfi Internet Explorer—both of which are available via free download on the Internet.)