The World's First Website Went Online 25 Years Ago

The World Wide Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, poses in front of the first World Wide Web server on March 13, 2009.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, poses in front of the first World Wide Web server on March 13, 2009.
Sebastian Derungs via Getty Images

Twenty-five years ago, the world's very first website debuted.

Called Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, the site went online at CERN on December 20, 1990.

As Engadget noted, this wasn’t the date the website went public (that happened several months later on August 6, 1991), but the moment still marked an important milestone in information network history.

“It's safe to say that this plain page laid the groundwork for much of the Internet as you know it -- even now, you probably know one or two people who still think the Web is the Internet,” the news outlet wrote.

World Wide Web

A 1992 version of the World Wide Web (screenshot above) is still online. As CERN explained, it was a bare-bones explainer of the “basic features of the web; how to access other people's documents and how to set up your own server.”

The Web was invented in 1989 by Berners-Lee, a British scientist.

WWW is closely-linked to the Internet, though it's not at all the same thing. As BBC explained: “The Internet is a huge network of computers all connected together. The World Wide Web is a collection of webpages found on this network of computers. Your web browser uses the Internet to access the Web.”

Happy 25th birthday, World Wide Web!

Earlier on HuffPost:

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