by 18a Editorial
On the 6th August 1991 (last Saturday), almost 25 years ago to the day, the world's first website was launched.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web on 12th March 1989, created the site on his NeXt computer at CERN's headquarters in Geneva, where he worked as a Computer Programmer. Set up on the domain http://info.cern.ch the website actually contained instructions of how the web worked and here's how the first page of that site looked;
As you can see the site was pretty basic and was presented as a basic text page containing links to other pages. This launch was the first example which Berners-Lee used to outline his plan for the World Wide Web. Initially a business proposal, he wanted it to be a place where people could use documents and links to share information across the world. It was an attempt to prevent the loss of information within businesses and scientific circles, as he called it the World Wide Web was created as a "universal linked information system".
Almost a year later the first image was uploaded to the web, 'Les Horribles Cernettes' which were a parady pop band founded by employees of CERN who used to perform at company events.
It wasn't until 2 years later in 1993 that the World Wide Web was 'open to the public' and anyone could build a website and the rest, as they say, is history!