Where the web was born

British scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in 1989

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automatic information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.

Screenshot of the recreated page of the first website
Source: CERN (CDS)

The first website at CERN – and in the world – was dedicated to the World Wide Web project itself and was hosted on Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer. In 2013, CERN launched a project to restore this first ever website: info.cern.ch.

On 30 April 1993, CERN put the World Wide Web software in the public domain. Later, CERN made a release available with an open licence, a more sure way to maximise its dissemination. These actions allowed the web to flourish.

A replica of the NeXT machine used by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 to develop and run the first WWW server, multimedia browser and web editor.

A short history of the web
A screenshot showing the NeXT world wide web browser created by Tim Berners-Lee

Licensing the web
Convention of CERN

Browse the first website

Discover the World Wide Web’s humble beginnings with the earliest incarnation

A screenshot showing the NeXT world wide web browser created by Tim Berners-Lee

The WorldWideWeb browser

Surf the Web using a recreation the first browser that was written in 1990

Screenshot of the recreated page of the first website

The line-mode browser

The line-mode browser, launched in 1992, was the first readily accessible browser for the Web