When Sir Tim Berners-Lee, an Oxford University graduate, submitted his initial proposal for an information management system to colleagues at CERN 30 years ago, it is unlikely he knew the power the Web would wield and the impact it would have on society.

To mark the anniversary, here is a look at the history of the early Web and its creation:

– March 1989

Information Management: A proposal written by Tim Berners-Lee and circulated for comments at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN.

– October 1990

Sir Tim starts work on a hypertext graphical user interface (GUI) browser and editor using a NeXT Cube computer and the NeXTStep development environment programme. He chooses “WorldWideWeb” as the name for the project.

– August 1991

The files on the project are made available on the internet.

– May 1992

Pei Wei, a student computer programmer and member of the eXperimental Computing Facility computer club at the University of California, Berkeley, submits his “Viola” browser for the project’s X test version.

– February 1993

National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) releases the first alpha version of Marc Andreessen’s “Mosaic for X”, which would become the browser used to popularise the Web, being ported to Microsoft Windows and eventually being licensed by Microsoft to create its Internet Explorer browser.

– April 1993

CERN declares WWW technology would be freely usable by anyone, with no fees being payable to the organisation.

– May 1994

First International WWW Conference at CERN in Geneva.

– October 1994

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international community where web standards are agreed upon, is founded.