Happy (belated) birthday to the internet!In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee (not Al Gore) developed a technology to help physicists in universities and institutes around the world share information. Twenty years ago this week, on April 30, 1993, the European science agency CERN, where Mr Berners-Lee worked, officially made his W3 software public domain, letting the public at large access it.And the world has never been the same since.To help celebrate what they label “the birth of the web”, CERN has launched a project to preserve and recreate the digital assets associated with the birth of the web.That website — the first in the world — was hosted on Mr Berners-Lee's NeXT computer, a cutting edge computer from the company of the same name that was built by Steve Jobs after he left Apple. The website described the basic features of the web; how to access other people's documents and how to set up your own server.For the record, Mr Berners-Lee, who is often called The Godfather of the internet, did not "invent" the internet, and is quick to dispel any such rumours. In a post on his website, he explains the distinctions between the web protocol he developed and the larger internet."I was lucky enough to invent the Web at the time when the internet already existed — and had for a decade and a half. If you are looking for fathers of the internet, try Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn who defined the "internet Protocol" (IP) by which packets are sent on from one computer to another until they reach their destination."