World Wide Web Day: History, significance and theme

The WWW was created by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, while he was working for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. Berners-Lee developed the essentials of the web –  HTTP, HTML, the WorldWideWeb browser, a server, and the first website – while working at the organisation.

Over the next two years, the development of the WWW was first shared with other research institutes and organisations. But WWW also was shared with the public as CERN shared the code and waived royalty on the use of the WWW in 1993. Less than a year later, hundreds of websites were created and the dot-com bubble started in 1995 based on the rapid developments being made using the WWW.

When we speak of the Internet today we talk about the billions of web pages that are present that we can connect to at any time. What many might not know is the fact that what we call the Internet is the combination of the World Wide Web and the Internet. The World Wide Web is the collection of all websites, webpages and resources that we can navigate to. The Internet can be thought of as the highway that connects all the webpages and websites. The development of the Web and the Internet has been instrumental in propelling the Information Age that the world is currently in.