The internet as we know it today took flight in 1990 when researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) developed the world wide web. The mastermind behind the project, Sir Tim Berners Lee, launched the first-ever modern-day website in 1990 and shared the source code he used with the world three years later. The website still works. Sir Timothy was frustrated that “there was different information on different computers.” and had to find a way to link files through homogeneous addresses, so he defined the URL, http, and html and laid the foundations of today’s internet, according to the Telegraph.

But the internet existed before the 90s: Before the Web, the internet did exist, but the word was more often than not used as shorthand for ‘internetworking’, a term to describe the process of linking different computer nodes over a wide area network. The world wide web essentially allowed anyone with a computer and telephone line access to those arbitrary nodes.

And just like many breakthroughs, it originated from military technology. In the height of the Cold War, information became the new atomic bomb, and connecting computers became a matter of national security, giving rise to communication techs such as packet switching and internet protocol suite, two key precursors of the web. Thanks to the the web, you can dive deeper into the internet’s history, courtesy of thousands of YouTubers (watch: runtime, 11:36).