History of the Creation of the First WorldWideWeb Browser

33 years ago, the world's first internet browser, WorldWideWeb, became publicly available, and its source code was released as open source. Its creator was British programmer Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the concept of the World Wide Web.

History of the Hypertext System

Four years earlier, in March 1989, Berners-Lee presented a report to the management of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) outlining the need for a distributed hypertext system. By that time, computer networks ARPANet and NSFNet had existed for nearly two decades but primarily functioned as channels for email transmission.

CERN faced a problem accessing vast amounts of data from thousands of employees. The idea of a hypertext network with addresses and a browser emerged from the need to quickly retrieve information from any connected computer.

Browser development began in the fall of 1990 on the NeXTSTEP operating system using NeXT computers from Steve Jobs' project. This environment provided the ideal functionality to implement these ideas. By December 1990, the first working version was ready.

News about the browser spread through Usenet newsgroups. Berners-Lee's colleagues joined the project: Robert Cailliau, Bernd Pollermann, and Jean-François Groff. In August 1991, the browser was presented to the public for the first time.

Features of the First Browser

WorldWideWeb allowed users not only to read but also to edit web pages. Editing worked on a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) principle, which forms the basis of modern visual editors.

CERN began sharing access with other institutions and then opened it to the general public. On April 30, 1993, the organization released the browser and its open source code for free to everyone.

This decision made the emerging Internet free and easy to learn. In 1994, the name was changed to Nexus Browser to avoid confusion with the term World Wide Web.

The source code of the first browser is stored on a NeXT computer at the CERN museum as a historical artifact. You can study the code via this link.