In 1985, the National Science Foundation (NSF) linked together its six supercomputing centers' networks. That year, there were 1,961 host computers (mainframes and workstations that provided information across the network) on the new Internet. During 1989 and 1990, the Internet changed from a network limited to government and government-sponsored organizations to one available to corporations and the general public.

In 1990, a developer at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) named Tim Bernes-Lee developed a new protocol called HHP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) for publishing Internet documents composed of not only text and graphics but also sound and video. The text and graphics could be linked to other documents was named the World Wide Web (WWW). The universal language for creating WWW documents is HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Mosaic, a cross platform Web browser was eclipsed in late 1994 by one from Netscape that experienced even wider adoption.

The results were dramatic. In January 1995, an estimated 4,852,000-host computer wre connected to the Internet, offering electronic mail and other services to roughly 35 million users. The evolution and growth of this Internet, which had become the INTERNET, generated great interest in the telecommunications and computing industries. In addition, it led to all the major on-line service providers announcing plans for and integrated browser as part of their service.

Between 1996 and the year 2000 the number of Web users will have exploded. The short-term growth explosion of the Internet at large is undoubted, but the critical element appears to be the Web.

Almost all-current commercial activity (bar email) on the Internet is via the Web. Web presence has almost become imperative for organizations, showing a forward-looking approach and an increase in the marketing portfolio. This is not to discount the growing usage of email however - billions of email messages are now sent over the Internet every month, making it the fastest growing medium for information exchange today.

The Internet then, looks set to continue its incredible growth and applicability for commercial, and non-commercial, organizations well into the new Millenium.
(Source: Judy Stahl, (January 19,1997). America On-line: Using Information Technology to Better Serve the Customer. Harvard Business Review)

And more information Link to Internet History.