Tim Berners-Lee, pioneer of the World Wide Web, c 1990s. Tim Berners-Lee devised his first hypertext system, Enquire, in 1980 whilst working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory on the border between France and Switzerland. He left CERN between 1981 and 1984, and rejoined as a full time employee in 1984. By 1990, working on a NeXT computer (now at the Science Museum, London), Berners-Lee was developing the first web Browser, and by the end of 1990 the worlds first web server was in operation at CERN - info@cern.ch.