The world's first website turns 25

This website was born exactly 25 years ago, with quite simple content but laid the foundation for the development of the giant Internet network as it is today.

On December 20, 1990, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee launched the world's first website. The site, located at info.cern.ch, was hosted on a NeXT server at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and is still accessible today.

Interface of info.cern.ch, the world's first website.

The website was not actually published until August 1991 and its content was simply an explanation of the World Wide Web (WWW), hypermedia (content that includes audio, images, etc.). Although it only contained rudimentary information, this website is considered to be the first step towards the Internet we use today.

The "father" of the web, Tim Berners-Lee continues to be involved in Internet-related work and is in charge of the World Wide Web Association. He is also working to protect open websites, against government interference, or organizations that aim to undermine the neutrality of the Internet.

Meanwhile, CERN, an organization involved in operating the world's first global network, has focused on particle physics research.

20 interesting facts about the web:

1. The first website address is http://info.cern.ch.

2. Domain names—the foundation of the web ecosystem—were born six years before the first website. The earliest domain name registered was Symbolics.com in March 1985.

3. NeXT Computer (the company founded by Steve Jobs) was the first web server.

4. At the end of 1992, there were only 26 web servers in the world.

5. Apache is the world's most popular web server and was also the first web server to reach 100 million installations in 2009.

6. Google also owns its own web server called Google Web Server (GWS). In July 2009, only 14.2 million sites used GWS, and today it is the fourth most popular web server in the world.

7. If you want to know why reading information on the Internet is called "surfing the Internet," ask Jean Armour Polly, who coined the phrase Surfing the Internet and is the author of several books on the Internet.

8. Porn is one of the biggest and most engaging content categories on the web, but the first .xxx domain name didn't appear until August 2011.

9. According to Worldwidewebsize, as of August 5, 2011, the world has 19.68 billion websites, 3 times the total world population.

10. In 1996, Americans spent an average of just 30 minutes per month surfing the web.

11. The first browser, also developed by Berners-Lee, was WorldWideWeb.

12. The first browser developed for PC and Mac users was Mosaic, built by the US National Supercomputing Center in February 1993. It was one of the first graphical browsers and fueled the explosion in web usage.

13. April 30, 1993 was a particularly important day because CERN announced that anyone could use WWW technology freely and for free.

14. On May 26, 1994, the Conference Dinner was held to award the best of WWW.

15. Although "worldwide" is the correct spelling, Tim Berners-Lee decided to write it separately to avoid confusion in non-English speaking communities.

16. Nowadays, users are not required to type www when entering a web address.

17. The blue link of the website was chosen because more than a decade ago, computer screens only supported 16 colors and blue was the darkest color that did not affect the readability of the text.

18. According to most users, Google.com is the most important website on the Internet in the past 20 years.

19. Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, born in 1984, is the youngest billionaire in the world thanks to providing services on the web.

20. One in eight couples met online.

According to VnExpress