25 years of the world wide web

The 25th anniversary of the world wide web will be celebrated around the globe this week. The milestone will be marked on Wednesday, a quarter of a century since it was first proposed in 1989 by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee.

For anybody under the age of 20, it is hard to imagine what life would be like without the web, which is not to be confused with the internet — a massive chain of networks, which the web uses.

But when Lee first submitted his idea while working at Swiss physics laboratory, Cern, the response from his boss was the brief: “Vague, but exciting.” He went on to develop an invention that has revolutionised the lives of billions, with two out of five people in the world now connected.