History of the Web

The Web was born in a particle physics laboratory (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland in 1989. There,a computer specialist named Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a system of information management that used a “hypertext” process to link related documents over a network. He and his partner, Robert Cailliau, created a prototype and released it for review. For the first several years, web pages were text-only. It’s difficult to believe that in 1992 (not that long ago), the world had only 50 web servers, total.

The real boost to the Web’s popularity came in 1992 when the first graphical browser (NCSA Mosaic) was introduced. This allowed the Web to break out of the realm of scientific research into mass media. The ongoing development of the Web is overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
If you want to dig deeper into the Web’s history, check out these sites:

Web Developers’ Virtual Library - WDVL.com/Internet/History
W3C’s History Archives - www.w3.org/History.html