Information Management: A Proposal

Information Management: A Proposal
03/12/1989 AD invented

The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN.

Hhe submitted a memorandum, titled "Information Management: A Proposal", to the management at CERN. The proposal used the term "web" and was based on "a large hypertext database with typed links". It described a system called "Mesh" that referenced ENQUIRE, the database and software project he had built in 1980, with a more elaborate information management system based on links embedded as text:

"Imagine, then, the references in this document all being associated with the network address of the thing to which they referred, so that while reading this document, you could skip to them with a click of the mouse." → TBL

Such a system, he explained, could be referred to using one of the existing meanings of the word hypertext, a term that he says was coined in the 1950s. Berners-Lee notes the possibility of multimedia documents that include graphics, speech and video, which he terms hypermedia.

Although the proposal attracted little interest, Berners-Lee was encouraged by his manager, Mike Sendall, to begin implementing his system on a newly acquired NeXT workstation. He considered several names, including Information Mesh, The Information Mine or Mine of Information, but settled on World Wide Web. Berners-Lee found an enthusiastic supporter in his colleague and fellow hypertext enthusiast Robert Cailliau who began to promote the proposed system throughout CERN. Berners-Lee and Cailliau pitched Berners-Lee's ideas to the European Conference on Hypertext Technology in September 1990, but found no vendors who could appreciate his vision.

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Lattitude: 46.2° N
Longitude: 6.15° E
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