30 Years of World Wide Web April 30th, 1993

30 years ago today, what we call the triumph of the World Wide Web began. Development by Tim Berners-Lee, who was still a relatively unknown physicist at the time, was made available to mankind free of charge.

The cornerstone for the success of the Internet was laid on April 30, 1993, at the Swiss nuclear research center CERN with the release of the developments of the World Wide Web under a public domain license.

Tim Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Cailliau had been working on the WWW for years, arguing that their open technology idea should be freely accessible to everyone.

Waiver of license fees paved the way for success

CERN then decided, surprisingly for many, to waive license fees and released the W3 basic client, the W3 basic server, and the W3 Library of Common Code (libWWW). This free access enabled rapid dissemination, use worldwide, and, above all, rapid further development.

The day of the opening of the WWW is therefore a more important anniversary for many scientists than the day of the presentation or the beginning of the development of the project itself.

Basically, the web was created in 1989 as a project at the research facility CERN. The first concept envisaged the construction of a hypertext system for the exchange of information. The concept was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Cailliau. On March 12, 1989, the idea was presented for the first time. The original goal of the system was to exchange extensive research results with colleagues in a timely manner and at the same time to receive feedback on them.

WWW is everyday life

People, therefore, wanted to stretch a network of information about the world, but of course, they did not expect the extent of this network at the time. For more than 30 years, the World Wide Web has been an integral part of our everyday lives.