If you think your web host has been around forever, think again. Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the web!

A prior March 1989 document that he drafted for CERN with the drab title “Information Management: A Proposal” had been met with minimal internal interest. Berners-Lee’s group leader, Mike Sendall, was mildly intrigued and allowed him to keep tinkering on the project, calling it “vague, but exciting.”

As Berners-Lee would later recount in his memoir, “Weaving the Web,” he decided some rebranding was in order, and he ran through a number of potential names for the project. One idea was Mesh, “but it sounded a little too much like mess.” Mine of Information might seem “too egocentric” when treated as an acronym, MOI, French for “me.” The Information Mine could be seen as “even more egocentric” based on its acronym: TIM, Berners-Lee’s first name.

"CERN’s experiments and projects were usually given names of Greek or Egyptian mythological figures, and I specifically did not want that because I wanted something for the future and different. I had looked at Nordic mythology but not found anything suitable.”

Finally, Berners-Lee came up with a three-word name that suitably described the global reach of the system they were envisioning: World Wide Web. Berners-Lee put forward the name “as a temporary measure.” They agreed to use it for their revamped proposal for CERN management, as the proposal could not be delayed any further. “If the proposal was accepted, they would find a better name.” They never did manage to replace that stopgap label, of course

The attached document describes in more detail "A Hypertext project".

HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports, notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). We propose a simple scheme incorporating servers already available at CERN.

The project has two phases: firstly we make use of existing software and hardware as well as implementing simple browsers for the user's workstations, based on an analysis of the requirements for information access needs by experiments. Secondly, we extend the application area by also allowing the users to add new material.

Phase one should take 3 months with the full manpower complement, phase two a further 3 months, but this phase is more open-ended, and a review of needs and wishes will be incorporated into it.

The manpower required is 4 software engineers and a programmer, (one of which could be a Fellow). Each person works on a specific part (eg. specific platform support).

Each person will require a state-of-the-art workstation , but there must be one of each of the supported types. These will cost from 10 to 20k each, totalling 50k. In addition, we would like to use commercially available software as much as possible, and foresee an expense of 30k during development for one-user licences, visits to existing installations and consultancy.

Read more

Some likely thought he was dreaming. I wonder if anyone really could have imagined the impact 20 years ago of the change about to unfold on the world.