On April 30, 1993 CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) made World Wide Web technology available to everyone at no cost, allowing the Internet to take off and grow until it was the ubiquitous, indispensable tool that it is today. The technology for the Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, but it was his decision, and that of his fellow scientists at CERN, to give it away that made it possible for anyone and everyone to use Internet the way we do now.
As a physicist, Berners-Lee developed the Web and HTML to make communication between scientists quicker and simpler. The Internet already existed, but it wasn’t easy to find and share information. The Web’s simplicity, plus the fact that it was royalty-free, changed the way we search for and share information of all kinds.
In honor of 20 years of the World Wide Web, CERN is planning to bring back the very first web page. You can read about the project here, and in the meantime, enjoy your email, your updates, all your searching, browsing, surfing, and all those cute kitty photos, thanks to Berners-Lee and the folks at CERN.
Posted by Nancy, who has always admired Sir Tim.