On November 21, 1990, CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian engineer Robert Cailliau finalized a project proposal and put the first web server, httpd, and the first browser, WorldWideWeb, into working order at CERN in Geneva. The system let physicists link documents across computers using simple hypertext, a modest tool that would reshape global communication, commerce, and culture within a decade.
Tim Berners-Lee had spent 1990 trying to solve a mundane problem: physicists at CERN kept losing track of each other's research because everyone used different computers, formats, and filing systems. His solution, built on a NeXT computer, combined hypertext with the internet's existing plumbing, creating something new. The server ran on a machine that carried a handwritten warning taped to it: 'This machine is a server. DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!'
There was no launch event, no press conference. Berners-Lee and Cailliau simply got the software stable enough to demonstrate internally, sharing pages between two NeXT cubes. The browser doubled as an editor, letting users write and link pages as easily as reading them, a feature later web browsers largely abandoned.
Within three years CERN placed the web technology in the public domain, refusing to charge royalties. That single decision, more than any code, is why the web became a free, open commons rather than a licensed product, and why by 1993 there were only a few dozen servers worldwide, a number about to explode into billions of pages.