Today in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee launched the world’s first website. He also posted a brief summary of his idea for the World Wide Web project to the alt.hypertext Usenet newsgroup. It is the first public mention of the project.
Berners-Lee message said, in part:
The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any information anywhere… The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data, news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome!
In Weaving the Web, Berners-Lee wrote:
Putting the Web out on alt.hypertext was a watershed event. It exposed the Web to a very critical academic community… From then on, interested people on the Internet provided the feedback, stimulation, ideas, source-code contributions, and moral support that would have been hard to find locally. The people of the Internet built the Web, in true grassroots fashion.