Originally based on the ARPAnet military network launched in 1969 to link only universities, government bodies and defence agencies, the Internet quickly evolved into thousands of linked networks.
1990 witnessed the introduction of America Online, which competed with the already established Prodigy and CompuServe networks by specialising in chat folders and offering an easy-to-use interface.
Thanks to the development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee (pictured below) in 1990, information was easily shared between users using point-and-click ‘hyperlinks’.
In 1993 there were fewer than 100 web servers in the world. By 2003 there were over 30 million.
