Who invented the Web & Why?

"CERN is a meeting place for physicists from all over the world, who collaborate on complex physics, engineering and information handling projects. Thus, the need for the WWW system arose "from the geographical dispersion of large collaborations, and the fast turnover of fellows, students, and visiting scientists," who had to get "up to speed on projects and leave a lasting contribution before leaving." CERN possessed both the financial and computing resources necessary to start the project. In the original proposal, Berners-Lee outlined two phases of the project: First, CERN would "make use of existing software and hardware as well as implementing simple browsers for the user's workstations, based on an analysis of the requirements for information access needs by experiments." Second, they would "extend the application area by also allowing the users to add new material."

Berners-Lee expected each phase to take three months "with the full manpower complement": he was asking for four software engineers and a programmer. The proposal talked about "a simple scheme to incorporate several different servers of machine-stored information already available at CERN." Set off in 1989, the WWW quickly gained great popularity among Internet users.

For instance, at 11:22 am of April 12, 1995, the WWW server at the SEAS of the University of Pennsylvania "responded to 128 requests in one minute. Between 10:00 and 11:00.