By: Jose A. Toledo
The World Wide Web Consortium, otherwise known as the W3C, got started in October 1994. It was, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, who founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Computer Science, in collaboration with CERN, support from DARPA and the European Commission. This consortium was established to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential, such as developing new use of protocols, developing specifications, guidelines, software, and other important tools that will improve and maintain the web as a top source for information and other purposes.
The web was first invented in the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, known as CERN in 1989. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, known as DARPA, is a research development organization that is under the Department of Defense of the United States. They were the first ones interested in developing the web for security purposes. That is why they are one of the major contributors of the W3C.
In April 1995 the W3C had their first European host. It was the INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique). Then in 1996 the Keio University of Japan (Shonan Fujisawa Campus) in Asia, followed. Up to date the W3C has offices in: Australia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Korea, Morocco, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The W3C continues to grow internationally having offices worldwide.
