Whose Invention Was the World Wide Web?

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in March 1989 while working at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory) in Geneva. He wanted to solve a practical problem: helping physicists share information across different computer systems. By December 1990, he had built the three fundamental technologies: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) for creating web pages, URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) for addressing them, and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) for transferring them. He also built the first web browser (called "WorldWideWeb") and the first web server (running on a NeXT computer at CERN). The first website went live on 20 December 1990. Crucially, in April 1993, CERN released the World Wide Web software into the public domain, making it free for anyone to use and modify. This decision — not patenting the web — is what allowed it to grow from a physics tool into the defining technology of the modern age, connecting billions of people.