Last month, David Galbraith updated his article published in July 2010, and in which he was investigating the location where the web was invented: “One of the more interesting consequences of the details below, that hasn’t been picked up anywhere, is that technically the web was invented in France, not Switzerland”.
Great news but Galbraith adds: “The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit border within CERN and the main entrance is in Switzerland, so the situation of which country it was invented in is actually quite a tricky one“.
Not such great news after all, but I like the way Galbraith concludes, very diplomatically: “So although, strictly speaking, France is the birthplace of the web it would be fair to say that it happened in building 31 at CERN but not in any particular country! How delightfully appropriate for an invention which breaks down physical borders“.
CERN being a joint European venture and an international organization, the importance to find which country is the birthplace of the web doesn’t really matter. The European Organization for Nuclear Research is doing an amazing job; the organization operates the Large Hadron Collider and we can read on their website that data taken in 2012 will allow them either to confirm a Higgs discovery or to rule out its existence conclusively.
Until then, you can join the hunt for the Higgs Boson I mentioned in this post!
