8/1/91 – Birth Of The World Wide Web
Before TikTok, doomscrolling, and 47 open tabs you’ll never close, there was just a guy named Tim Berners-Lee, sitting in an office at CERN, trying to help physicists share files without having to stand up.
On August 1, 1991, the World Wide Web quietly went live, and by “live,” we mean it blinked into existence on a single computer, with a text-based website and no GIFs, no ads, and no influencers selling protein powder. That first site? http://info.cern.ch. It’s still up, still text, and somehow still more reliable than anything you see on your phone today.
Berners-Lee wasn’t trying to invent cat memes or online dating. He just wanted a better way to share data without having to get up and walk. So he created HTML, HTTP, and the world’s first web browser, which he humbly named WorldWideWeb, because what else would you call it?
The actual announcement didn’t hit the public until August 6, via a post on a message board (Usenet, for the elders in the room), but August 1 is when the rest of the world technically got access to the Web… though most had no idea what it was, or that it would soon make you question society and your own sanity.
Today, we celebrate World Wide Web Day every August 1 to honor the moment humanity collectively chose: “Yeah, I’ll click that.”
Thanks, Tim. You gave us the Web—and with it, shopping in pajamas, endless trivia, and many things that I can never unsee in my lifetime.
Ironic that I’m making fun of the internet while posting a story about it at the same time. I know.
Doug O’Brien
