Hypertext Transfer Protocol

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) became the circulatory system of the World Wide Web—the simple language through which browsers request and servers deliver the documents that constitute the internet's visible layer. Tim Berners-Lee designed it at CERN, and its deliberate simplicity enabled the explosive growth that followed.

The adjacent possible emerged from a physicist's frustration. By 1989, CERN had become a crossroads where researchers from around the world arrived with incompatible computers and document formats. Information existed but couldn't flow. Berners-Lee's March 1989 proposal, 'Information Management: A Proposal,' outlined a solution. His boss scrawled 'Vague but exciting' on the cover.

By the end of 1990, Berners-Lee had built the complete system on his NeXT computer. HTTP was the transfer mechanism—a request-response protocol where clients asked for resources and servers delivered them. HTML provided the document format. URLs specified addresses. Together, these three inventions formed the web.

The brilliance of HTTP lay in its simplicity. The protocol was stateless—each request stood alone, requiring no memory of previous interactions. This made servers simple to build and easy to scale. Berners-Lee deliberately avoided complexity that might have delayed adoption or created barriers to implementation.

The technology spread to other research institutions in January 1991 and to the entire internet on August 23, 1991. Berners-Lee announced his creation on the alt.hypertext newsgroup on August 6, 1991. The first American web server went live at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center on December 12, 1991, set up by physicist Paul Kunz.

The cascade accelerated after CERN's crucial 1993 decision to place the software in the public domain. By late 1994, the web had 10,000 servers—2,000 commercial—and 10 million users. Traffic equaled 'shipping the collected works of Shakespeare every second.'

Path dependence locked in HTTP as the web's foundation. Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT in October 1994, ensuring the protocol would evolve through open standards rather than corporate control. HTTP has been extended (HTTPS for security, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 for performance), but the basic request-response model remains unchanged. Every web page you view still speaks the language Berners-Lee designed on his NeXT computer at CERN.