The Logbook: The origin of the World Wide Web

The terms “Internet” and “World Wide Web” are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t identical products. While the Internet can be seen as the underlying protocol, the World Wide Web entails things like e-mail and search engines: high-level applications and services built on top of the Internet.

The World Wide Web (the Web) was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee during his time working at CERN, a European nuclear research organization. According to Berners-Lee, his idea of the Web came as a result of his frustration with information sharing across different computers. At CERN, employees were using different computers running all types of software, making collaborative work challenging.