Happy 25th birthday, WWW.

A short post this, to remind that today is officially the 25th birthday of the World-Wide-Web, in March 1989. It took five years for a conference around the theme to be organised and below is a photo from that event.

(C) CERN Photo

From my perspective and perhaps from the 200 or so others present at that closing session, I went back home and told my young children that the world had changed that week. So it has.

And one personal anecdote. In January  1994, a colleague in my department mentioned that they knew the producer of a BBC science program called Tomorrow's World. He suggested I send him an email describing what the WWW was, and its potential. I did, and he responded a little time later with a link to the very first Web site produced within the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). To my regret ever since, I did not capture that site as it was then. Of course, it eventually grew  to the one we now know (and read about TimBL's call for a Web Magna Carta on that very site today).

Here is another momento, although very sadly not in good condition (it was dropped in the garden, and spent some time buried!). A genuine first WWW conference badge.