Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web!

Saturday 6^th August 2011 marks the 20^th anniversary of the World Wide Web. Twenty years ago, a team of CERN engineers lead by Sir Tim Berners-Lee made the first web page available to the public. This website gave a simple explanation of what the world wide web was and how it could be used.

Before the web was made public, it was used at CERN to allow physicists to efficiently share data, documentation and news. Berners-Lee quickly realised the potential of the web and made it available to the public royalty free, this allowed the massive expansion in the World Wide Web and one of the main reasons it has become such a huge success.

Berners-Lee is often referred to as the creator of the World Wide Web, this is because he created the two fundamental pieces (HTML and HTTP). He then used a NeXT computer to act as the world’s first web server. He also coded the first ever web browser, which was also used as a HTML editor.

It’s hard to imagine where we would be today without the World Wide Web, well, first of all you wouldn’t be reading this article. With thousands of companies and businesses using it as a fundamental tool in day to day life and the ability for anyone, anywhere to post whatever they want at any time, for the whole world to see. It’s important to recognise the work of Sir Berners-Lee and his team and to acknowledge the fact that it was made public completely free, without any patients or royalties owed, for the sole purpose to expand and be adopted by anyone.