WARNING: For Archival/Historical Interest -- The following document dates from 1995 and has not been updated. The history is of course still valid though not up to date. Some links may not work.

A Little History of the World Wide Web

1980

While consulting for CERN June-December of 1980, Tim Berners-Lee writes a notebook program, "Enquire-Within-Upon-Everything", which allows links to be made betwen arbitrary nodes. Each node had a title, a type, and a list of bidirectional typed links. "ENQUIRE" run on Norsk Data machines under SINTRAN-III.

1989

March: "Information Management: A Proposal" written by Tim BL and circulated for comments at CERN (TBL). Paper "HyperText and CERN" produced as background (text or WriteNow format).

1990

May: Same proposal recirculated
October: Project proposal reformulated with encouragement from CN and ECP divisional management. Robert Cailliau (ECP) is co-author. Tim picks World Wide Web as a name for the project (over Information Mesh, Mine of Information, and Information Mine).
November: Initial WorldWideWeb program developed on the NeXT (TBL) . This was a wysiwyg browser/editor with direct inline creation of links.
November: Technical Student Nicola Pellow (CN) joins and starts work on the line-mode browser. Bernd Pollermann (CN) helps get interface to CERNVM "FIND" index running. TBL gives a colloquium on hypertext in general.
Christmas: Line mode browser and NeXTStep browser/editor demonstrable. Acces is possible to hypertext files, CERNVM "FIND", and Internet news articles.

1991

February: workplan for the purposes of ECP division.
26 February 1991: Presentation of the project to the ECP/PT group.
March: Line mode browser (www) released to limited audience on "priam" vax, rs6000, sun4.
May: Workplan produced for CN/AS group First US server at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory).
17 May: Presentation to "C5" Committee. General release of WWW on central CERN machines.
12 June: CERN Computer Seminar on WWW.
August: Files available on the net, posted on alt.hypertext (6, 16, 19th Aug), comp.sys.next (20th), comp.text.sgml and comp.mail.multi-media (22nd). Jean-Francois Groff joins the project.
October: VMS/HELP and WAIS gateways installed. Mailing lists www-interest (now www-announce) and www-talk@info.cern.ch started. One year status report. Anonymous telnet service started.
December: Presented poster and demonstration at Hypertext'91 in San Antonio, Texas (US). W3 browser installed on VM/CMS. CERN computer newsletter announces W3 to the HEP world.

1992

15 January: Line mode browser release 1.1 available by anonymous FTP (see news). Presentation to AIHEP'92 at La Londe (FR).
12 February: Line mode v 1.2 annouced on alt.hypertext, comp.infosystems, comp.mail.multi-media, cern.sting, comp.archives.admin, and mailing lists.
April: 29th April: Release of Finnish "Erwise" GUI client for X mentioned in review by TimBL.
May: Pei Wei's "Viola" GUI browser for X test version dated May 15. (See review by TimBL)
At CERN, Presentation and demo at JENC3, Innsbruck (AT). Technical Student Carl Barker (ECP) joins the project.
June: Presentation and demo at HEPVM (Lyon). People at FNAL (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US)), NIKHEF (Nationaal Instituut voor Kern- en Hoge Energie Fysika, (NL)), DESY (Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Hamburg, (DE)) join with WWW servers.
July: Distribution of WWW through CernLib, including Viola. WWW library code ported to DECnet. Report to the Advisory Board on Computing.
August: Introduction of CVS for code management at CERN.
September: Plenary session demonstration to the HEP community at CHEP'92 in Annecy (FR).

November Jump back in time to a snapshot of the WWW Project Page as of 3 Nov 1992 and the WWW project web of the time, including the list of all 26 resoanably reliable servers, NCSA's having just been added, but no sign of Mosaic.

1993

January: By now, Midas (Tony Johnson, SLAC), Erwise (HUT), and Viola (Pei Wei, O'Reilly Associates) browsers are available for X; CERN Mac browser (ECP) released as alpha. Around 50 known HTTP servers.
February: NCSA release first alpha version of Marc Andreessen's "Mosaic for X". Computing seminar at CERN
March: WWW (Port 80 HTTP) traffic measures 0.1% of NSF backbone traffic. WWW presented at Online Publishing 93, Pittsburgh.
April: April 30: Date on the declaration by CERN's directors that WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to CERN. A milestone document.
July: Ari Luotonen (ECP) joins the project at CERN. He implements access authorisation, proceeds to re-write the CERN httpd server.
August: O'Reilly hosts first WWW Wizards Workshop in Cambridge Mass (US).
September: WWW (Port 80 http) traffic measures 1% of NSF backbone traffic. NCSA releases working versions of Mosaic browser for all common platforms: X, PC/Windows and Macintosh.
October: Over 200 known HTTP servers. The European Commission, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and CERN start the first Web-based project of the European Union (DG XIII): WISE, using the Web for dissemination of technological information to Europe's less favoured regions.
December: WWW receives IMA award. John Markov writes a page and a half on WWW and Mosaic in "The New York Times" (US) business section. "The Guardian" (UK) publishes a page on WWW, "The Economist" (UK) analyses the Internet and WWW.
Robert Cailliau gets go-ahead from CERN management to organise the First International WWW Conference at CERN.

1994

January: O'Reilly, Spry, etc announce "Internet in a box" product to bring the Web into homes.
March: Marc Andreessen and colleagues leave NCSA to form "Mosaic Communications Corp" (now Netscape).
May 25-27: First International WWW Conference, CERN, Geneva. Heavily oversubscribed (800 apply, 400 allowed in): the "Woodstock of the Web". VRML is conceived here.
June: M. Bangemann report on European Commission Information Superhighway plan. Over 1500 registered servers.
July: MIT/CERN agreement to start W3 Organisation is announced by Bangemann in Boston. Press release. AP wire. Reports in Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe etc.
August: Founding of the IW3C2: the International WWW Conference Committee, in Boston, by NCSA and CERN.
September: The European Commission and CERN propose the WebCore project for development of the Web core technology in Europe.
October: Second International WWW Conference: "Mosaic and the Web", Chicago. Also heavily oversubscribed: 2000 apply, 1300 allowed in.
14 December: First W3 Consortium Meeting at M.I.T. in Cambridge (USA).
15 December: First meeting with European Industry and the European Consortium branch, at the European Commission, Brussels.
16 December: CERN Council approves unanimously the construction of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) accelerator, CERN's next machine and competitor to the US' already defunct SSC (Superconducting Supercollider). Stringent budget conditions are however imposed. CERN thus decides not to continue WWW development, and in concertation with the European Commission and INRIA (the Institut National pour la Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, FR) transfers the WebCore project to INRIA.

1995

February: the Web is the main reason for the theme of the G7 meeting hosted by the European Commission in the European Parliament buildings in Brussels (BE).
March: CERN holds a two-day seminar for the European Media (press, radio, TV), attended by 250 reporters, to show WWW. It is demonstrated on 60 machines, with 30 pupils from the local International High School helping the reporters "surf the Web".
April: Third International WWW Conference: "Tools and Applications", hosted by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, in Darmstadt (DE)
June: Founding of the Web Society in Graz (AT), by the Technical University of Graz (home of Hyper-G), CERN, the University of Minnesota (home of Gopher) and INRIA.
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Robert Cailliau

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Last updated 03 October 1995