The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, in 1989 while he was working at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). He created the first web browser, web server, and developed the key protocols HTML, HTTP, and URL system that underpin the Web. The first website went online in 1990, and the technology was made freely available to the public by CERN in 1993, allowing its rapid global adoption.