The success of the Internet demonstrates how technology can produce unexpected social changes. Once the exclusive domain of researchers and academics, the Internet is now second only to the global telephone network in its scale, economic importance, and daily use. For a more detailed perspective on the history of the Internet, see this Internet timeline . The Web began in 1992 at CERN , the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, as a means of distributing and annotating scientific research. Technical standards are now defined by the World-Wide Web Consortium .
Web documents are ordinary text files that can be created with any word processing program.
They include tags that control their appearance. Simple and reliable, HTTP is often a more cost-effective solution than traditional paper publishing. A URL is the Internet address for a web document or other file. Later in this tutorial, URLs are discussed in more detail. The web grew tremendously in popularity after the release of a free browser program, Mosaic , by the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications .