The world wide web has become such an integral part of our everyday lives that it can be really hard to imagine life without it. Many tend to forget that the web has not always been around and, in fact, the first webpage went live online only in 1991.
Here is how all of that went down:
The Beginnings of the First Ever Website
The creation of the first ever website is all thanks to British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. According to an article by History, his parents were both computer scientists as well and he went on to study physics at Oxford University.
By the time the 1980s rolled along, Berners-Lee was employed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, otherwise known as CERN. While at CERN, he "observed how tough it was to keep track of the projects and computer systems of the organization's thousands of researchers, who were spread around the globe," per the article by History.
In 1989, he proposed to the managers at CERN that an information management system be created to make all their lives just a bit easier. According to an article by NPR, "The system would use hypertext to connect documents on separate computers connected to the Internet."
His proposal was initially not accepted and so Berners-Lee worked with a fellow CERN employee, Robert Cailliau, to refine it.
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The Birth of the World Wide Web
Berners-Lee presented his revised proposal in 1990 and was finally given permission to work on it. Using a Steve Jobs-designed NeXT computer, he went on to create the foundation for creating websites today, including Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
On August 6, 1991, Berners-Lee launched the first ever website to ever hit the world wide web. The first website contained the details of the World Wide Web Project, including "how to create web pages and learn about hypertext," according to NPR.
This marked the birth of the World Wide Web. NPR's article points out that by 1992, there were 10 websites created. That number ballooned to 3,000 just two years later. By the time the Google's search engine came to be in 1996, two million websites have already been created.
According to History, Berners-Lee actually refused to patent the World Wide Web. He also did not make any efforts to cash in on it. "He wanted the Web to be open and free so it could expand and evolve as rapidly as possible," the article notes.
Can You Still Access the First Ever Website Created?
It may not surprise anyone but NPR reports that at some point, Berners-Lee's first ever website was lost. CERN went on to launch a project to restore it in 2013.
So yes, the first ever website can still be accessed at its original URL, no less.
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