On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a consultant at a physics lab in CERN in Switzerland, made  — for the first time — computer files available to the public which allowed people to build their first web pages.

The first web page appeared at http://info.cern.ch/.  It provided an explanation about what the World Wide Web was, how one could own a browser and how to set up a Web server.   The original webpage does not a exist, but a copy (made in 1992) is preserved here.

Eventually, the website served as the world’s first Web directory, since Berners-Lee maintained a list of other Web sites apart from his own.

Berners-Lee’s made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that their standards must be based on royalty-free technology, so they can be easily adopted by anyone.

Berners-Lee is why I can have a website and blog, and so can everybody else.