page-title: WWW Project History
h1: History to date
referenceURL: https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/History.html
A few steps to date in the WorldWideWeb project history are as follows:\n
March 1989: First project proposal written and circulated for comment (Tim Berners-Lee). Paper "HyperText and CERN" produced as background.
October 1990: Project proposal reformulated with encouragement from CN and ECP divisional management. Robert Cailliau is co-author.
November 1990: Initial WorldWideWeb prototype developed on the NeXT by Tim Berners-Lee.
November 1990: Nicola Pellow joins and starts work on the line-mode browser. Bernd Pollermann helps get interface to CERNVM "FIND" index running. TBL gives a colloquium on hypertext in general.
Christmas 1990: Line-mode and NeXTStep browsers demonstrable. Access is possible to hypertext files, CERNVM "FIND", and internet news articles.
February 1991: Workplan produced for the purposes of ECP division.
26 February 1991: Presentation of the project to the ECP group.
March 1991: Line-mode browser (WWW) released to a limited audience on Priam VAX, RS6000, and Sun4.
May 1991: Workplan produced for CN/AS group.
17 May 1991: Presentation to C5 committee. General release of WWW on central CERN machines.
12 June 1991: CERN Computer Seminar on WWW.
August 1991: Files available on the net, posted on various newsgroups (alt.hypertext, comp.sys.next, etc.). Jean-François Groff joins the project.
October 1991: VMS/HELP and WAIS gateways installed. Mailing lists and anonymous telnet service started. One-year status report.
December 1991: Presented poster and demonstration at HT91. W3 browser installed on VM/CMS. CERN computer newsletter announces W3 to the HEP world.
15 January 1992: Line-mode browser release 1.1 available by anonymous FTP. Presentation to AIHEP'92 at La Londe.
12 February 1992: Line-mode v1.2 announced on multiple newsgroups including alt.hypertext and comp.infosystems.
May 1992: Presentation and demo at JENC3 (Innsbruck). Carl Barker joins the project.
June 1992: Presentation and demo at HEPVM (Lyon).
July 1992: Distribution of WWW through CernLib, including Viola. WWW library code ported to DECnet.
August 1992: Introduction of CVS for code management.
Tim Berners-Lee