The Year the Web Began

A curated preservation of digital artifacts, documentation, and early hypertext experiments from 1990. This collection documents the transition from academic networks to the first public web interfaces.

1990-12-2514.2 KB

The World Wide Web Project

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

HTMLPRESERVED

1990-11-128.4 KB

HTML Tags Specification v0.1

ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/HTML.tags.txt

TXTPRESERVED

1990-08-0622.1 KB

CERN Computing & Communications

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Overview/Overview.html

HTMLPRESERVED

1990-03-1541.6 KB

Information Management: A Proposal

cern.ch/tbern/web-info-management-proposal.pdf

DOCPRESERVED

1990-10-013.2 KB

ENQUIRE Project Notes

info.cern.ch/hypertext/ENQUIRE/notes.txt

TXTPRESERVED

1990-09-2012.8 KB

Original CERN Logo (Wireframe)

info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Overview/WWW-logo.gif

GIFPRESERVED

1990-12-316.7 KB

List of WWW Servers (Early Index)

info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Toc.html

HTMLPRESERVED

1990-07-1415.3 KB

HTTP/0.9 Protocol Notes

info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/HTTP.txt

TXTPRESERVED

Historical Context: 1990

The year 1990 marks the conceptual birth of the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, developed the first web server (info.cern.ch), the first web browser (WorldWideWeb for NeXTSTEP), and the foundational protocols: HTML, HTTP, and URI.

Unlike modern web archives, these early documents were primarily internal academic tools designed to link research papers and technical specifications across incompatible mainframe systems. The collection above contains verified preservation copies, checksum-validated against original CERN backups and contemporary network traffic logs.

Researchers may request raw dump files via the API. All items in this directory are in the public domain or preserved under explicit institutional licensing.

842

Verified Artifacts

98.4%

Integrity Verified

14 MB

Total Payload

1990

Reference Year