<P> An early CERN - related contribution to the Web was the parody band Les Horribles Cernettes, whose promotional image is believed to be among the Web's first five pictures . </P> <P> In keeping with its birth at CERN and the first page opened, early adopters of the World Wide Web were primarily university - based scientific departments or physics laboratories such as Fermilab and SLAC . By January 1993 there were fifty Web servers across the world . In April 1993 CERN made the World Wide Web available on a royalty - free basis . By October 1993 there were over five hundred servers online . Two of the earliest webcomics started on the World Wide Web in 1993: Doctor Fun and NetBoy . </P> <P> Early websites intermingled links for both the HTTP web protocol and the then - popular Gopher protocol, which provided access to content through hypertext menus presented as a file system rather than through HTML files . Early Web users would navigate either by bookmarking popular directory pages, such as Berners - Lee's first site at http://info.cern.ch/, or by consulting updated lists such as the NCSA "What's New" page . Some sites were also indexed by WAIS, enabling users to submit full - text searches similar to the capability later provided by search engines . </P> <P> By the end of 1994, the total number of websites was still minute compared to present figures, but quite a number of notable websites were already active, many of which are the precursors or inspiring examples of today's most popular services . </P>

Why was the invention of the world wide web important