Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in 1989. Working at CERN, he wanted to make it easier for researchers to share and update information stored across different computers.
His March 1989 proposal described an information-management system based on hypertext links. Berners-Lee initially called the idea “Mesh” and considered other names before settling on World Wide Web. His manager, Mike Sendall, encouraged him to develop the concept despite finding the proposal somewhat vague.
The Web was not the same thing as the Internet. Berners-Lee’s innovation was to combine the existing Internet with HTML, HTTP and URL-style addresses, creating a universal system for linked documents. By late 1990, he had built the first browser, web server and website at CERN.
A common mix-up is answering 1991, the year Berners-Lee announced the project publicly and made it available beyond CERN. The proposal came first, in 1989; the first public website and broader rollout followed later.