World Wide Web Day is observed annually on the 1st day of August and celebrates one of the most monumental advances in electronic communication. The Web was first created to meet the needs of scientists to share information between educational facilities and universities across the world.

It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while he was working at CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire). The idea of the World Wide Web merged computer technology, hypertext, and data networks to create the most powerful global information system ever created. Sounds like a good reason for everyone to take a moment to observe this special day.

The History of World Wide Web Day

In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first proposal for the World Wide Web. The following year, he submitted his second proposal. Along with Belgian systems engineer Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee formalized a management proposal in November of 1990. This would outline the principal concepts behind the World Wide Web. By the end of that year, the first Web server was in operation at CERN.

Berners-Lee released his WWW software in 1991. This release included the line-mode browser, a library for developers, and the Web server software. In August of 1991, he then announced the World Wide Web software on Internet newsgroups, and interest in the project soon spread across the world.

Important Facts About the World Wide Web

We’re not just going to sit on our laurels and do an article on World Wide Web Day without also listing some of the facts that we’ve learned about the WWW along the way. We’ve searched the Internet high and low and discovered a ton of facts that we believe most people don’t know about. So grab yourself a beverage, buckle up, and let’s go over some important but little-known facts about the World Wide Web.

• Tim Berners-Lee invented a “proto” World Wide Web in 1980. He called it Enquire, and it had pages that were linked to other pages.
• The World Wide Web and the Internet are two different things. The Internet is a network of computers all around the world. The WWW consists of pages linked together found on this network.
• The Internet was around for decades before the invention of the World Wide Web.
• By 1993, there were over 620 web servers around the world.
• Conway Berners-Lee, the father of Tim Berners-Lee, worked on the first commercially built computer, the Ferranti Mark 1.
• Some of the original names proposed for the WWW were The Information Mine and The Information Mesh.
• The earliest version of the World Wide Web used the WorldWideWeb app, which was also an editor, so everyone could contribute to the WWW.
• In April of 2013, CERN hosted the early Web pages that Berners-Lee and the W3C had preserved from the 1992 version of the Web.
• Because the World Wide Web was decentralized, universal, and used royalty-free core technology, the WWW grew at an exponential rate.
• In April of 1993, CERN placed the World Wide Web into the public domain.
• The languages most used on the World Wide Web (and other forms of online communication) are English, Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese.

Observing World Wide Web Day

On this day, everyone can get together and give thanks for the creation of the World Wide Web. It’s been over 30 years since the creation of the WWW, and it has absolutely revolutionized modern society. Internet denizens are also encouraged to share news of this day online using the hashtag #WorldWideWebDay on their social media accounts. And finally, it’s also a good day to actually use the World Wide Web!