The World Wide Web Goes Public

Setting the scene

The internet existed for researchers, but there was no uniform way for everyday users to browse linked documents across different computers and operating systems.

What happened

Tim Berners-Lee at CERN announced the World Wide Web publicly in August 1991, proposing URLs, HTTP, and HTML so scientists could share papers—and anyone could build pages.

Why it still matters

The Web became the internet's dominant interface and spawned browsers, search engines, and the commercial dot-com economy. Memorable detail: Berners-Lee insisted the Web remain royalty-free rather than patenting it for personal profit.

Background

URLs, HTTP, and HTML became the internet's backbone.