The World's First Website Endures

Before the ubiquitous internet we know today, a groundbreaking innovation quietly emerged from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). In 1989, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposed an information management system to address the challenge of sharing and updating data among researchers across various computer and network systems. His vision was to merge evolving technologies like hypertext, data networks, and computers into a simple, powerful global information system. This ambitious project laid the foundation (Review) for what would become the World Wide Web.

The very first website, info.cern.ch, was developed by Berners-Lee and hosted on his NeXT computer at CERN. It went live in December 1990 and was made publicly available in August 1991. The site served as an essential guide to the fledgling World Wide Web project itself, explaining what the web was, how to use a browser, and providing technical details for setting up web servers. It was a "meta-document," essentially an instruction manual for the revolutionary system Berners-Lee had created.

The enduring presence of info.cern.ch offers a fascinating glimpse into the web's foundational simplicity. In 2013, CERN undertook a project to restore this original website, preserving it as a digital artifact for curious readers to explore. The decision by CERN to put the World Wide Web software in the public domain in 1993, and later under an open license, was crucial, allowing the web to spread globally and flourish into the interconnected resource we rely on daily.