Merry/Rudi: I didn't think the Swiss were part of that "European" community.

The first proposal for such a system (World Wide Web) was made at CERN (Geneva Switzerland) by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, and further refined by him and Robert Cailliau in 1990. By the end of that year, prototype software for a basic system was already being demonstrated. To encourage the adoption of the system, it was essential to offer access to existing information without having to convert it to an unfamiliar format. This was done by providing an interface to the CERN Computer Centre's documentation and help service, and also to the familiar Usenet newsgroups. All this information immediately became accessible via a simple WWW browser, which could be run on any system. And the rest is history (not that long ago--how did we manage with just that paper stuff!)