The application protocol used on the World Wide Web is called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
The appearance of a document on the World Wide Web is determined by Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags that are added to the document.
Both HTML and HTTP were defined by Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva Switzerland. Berners-Lee wanted to build a system for publishing linked documents, so physicists could share their scientific papers.
In 1991, Berners-Lee published the definition of HTTP and HTML. He also wrote and distributed Web client and Web server programs. (The Web client also served as an HTML editor).
The Web caught on quickly. The first Netcraft survey, found 109 different Web server programs in August, 1995.
Here is a screen shot of an early version of his client program.
People soon began using the Web for other applications than publishing physics papers. The Web quickly displaced Gopher, a popular application for publishing linked text documents on the Internet at that time.
Web documents could contain pictures, sound even video in addition to text. Furthermore, links could appear anywhere in a Web document. (Gopher links had to be in a table of contents).
Here is the first picture on the Web.
Prior to the Web, the Internet was mostly used by academics and technicians. The Web was to a great extent responsible for the general public becoming aware of the Internet.
The Internet culture was very open in those pre-commerce days, and Berners-Lee and others contributed their work to the community without expectation of commercial gain. They freely published their ideas as requests for comments (RFCs) and software was open source. (This is the RFC for HTTP, the Web protocol).
