World Wide Web - WWW meaning, history and origin

The World Wide Web, generally known as the Web, is a system of linked hypertext documents accessible via the Internet. Using a program known as a Web browser you can see pages that can contain texts, images, interactive media such as video or music and almost any multimedia elements.

One of the great successes of the system was the connection between the pages through hyperlinks. This allows a non-linear path between the documents, known as navigation.

The original proposal of the Web was written in the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in the year of 1989 by Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, taking as a precursor idea to a project never materialized called Memex. Conceived by Vannevar Bush in 1945, it consisted of a device that would store documents of all kinds that would be consulted and edited through a kind of keyboard with levers.

March of 1989 is known as the milestone that marks the birth of the Internet, and positions Berners-Lee as a father. The formal proposal of the Web was officially presented at CERN on November 12, 1990 in part thanks to the collaboration of Robert Cailliau.

As a member of CERN, he was the one who decided to take the idea of Berners-Lee and helped both in the writing and in the provision of resources to finalize the project. By the end of 1990 they had already built the first Web server in a Next system, and the first browser-page editor software.

However, it was not until April 1993 when CERN decided to allow free and free use of the Web to the community. The appearance of the first MOSAIC Web browser from NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications) marked the official beginning of the Web as a community oriented system.