36 years ago today, 12 november 1990, tim berners-lee and robert cailliau sent this memo around cern: "worldwideweb: proposal for a hypertext project." they asked for four software engineers and a programmer, a few workstations at 10 to 20k each — 50k all in — and another 30k for licences and consultancy. phase one: three months, a simple browser on machines already at the lab. phase two: another three months, more open-ended, so people could add their own material.
hypertext, they wrote, is "a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will." one interface for reports, notes, databases, documentation and online help, using servers cern already had. they even assumed computing support would come at no cost.
it's almost funny how modest the ask was. they weren't pitching the modern web. they were asking for permission to try a cleaner way of linking what was already sitting around the building. it worked out.
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The "WorldWide" part of the name does suggest they had bigger ambitions though!
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and all our lives were irreversibly changed.
