World Wide Web. What About It?
Created | Updated Nov 4, 2004
Since the World-Wide Web came into existence our life on this Earth has changed. Countless people throughout the Globe know of it and use it all the time. Countless numbers of human activities, today, would be inconceivable if 'www' were not there to help and to give answers to questions with a click of a mouse on the computer. Yet what do we know about it? Who invented it? How and where did it come into our daily life?
Www was born in the year 1994 at CERN, the world's leading particle physics research laboratory based in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1989 a scientist at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee, proposed an information system using hypertext. In 1990 another scientist, Robert Cailliau, joined him and the development team of the Web was formed.
Because 20 Europeans countries operated at CERN and scientists came from all over the world to work there, it was very neccessary to create a communication system that would be usable throughout the world. It also needed to be readable by any computer and any software.
By 1991 the usefulness of this system was recognised and a whole range of universities and research laboratories started to use it. The European Commission approved the first Web project in 1993, in partnership with CERN. The First International World-Wide Web conference was held at CERN in May, 1994. A further conference was held in the US in October and an International Conference Committee formed to ensure that the 'web' remeained 'an open standard' and accessible by all. The 'www' was firmly on the map.
CERN recently celebrated its 50th anniversary and 'www' its 10th A full insight into all the work undertaken by CERN can be found on their comprehensive Website
I visited CERN in 2 occasions while in Geneva. I took many photographs and, as a visual artist, I created on my computer an interpretation of the 'Birth of WWW'.
