CERN laboratory, Geneva, Switzerland

Tim Berners-Lee | World Wide Web <1989>

"An important part is the integration of a hypertext system with existing data, so as to provide a universal system, and to achieve
critical usefulness"

1980 : Enquire : storing, retrieval, and hyperlinking of documents through CERN's computer network

World Wide Web : a hypertext system that would work in conjunction with the Internet.

1991 distribution of a first Web browser and server software

Use of open format for the data and its addressing

In the early 1980s, the British engineer Tim Berners-Lee began to develop a networked system for the electronic publishing of scientific reports at CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. This system, named Enquire, was to have enabled the storing, retrieval, and hyperlinking of documents through CERN's computer network. It was never completed, but – influenced by Ted Nelson's experiments with hypertext, digital publishing, and open networking – Berners-Lee expanded on its underlying concepts to explore how a hypertext system might work in conjunction with the Internet.

Working under his own initiative, in the fall of 1990 Berners-Lee completed the first Web browser and server software. In 1991, he began to distribute his software, now named the World Wide Web, to scientists over the Internet. Berners-Lee's Web is a software system that unites research, documents, programs, laboratories and scientists in a fluid, open, hypermedia environment. It is inherently dynamic, capable of expanding at an explosive rate; this was a significant departure from the hierarchical data systems that had previously been the standard. Berners-Lee was well aware of his system's potential to link documents across the globe, and to transform our information culture. While his original focus was on hypertext, from the start he saw the Web's eventual embrace of multimedia, which could well prove to be its enduring legacy.