What does HTTP stand for in web addresses?
Last updated: January 27, 2025
Back when CERN's scientists had to shuffle between offices with floppy disks just to share their research, Tim Berners-Lee thought there had to be a better way. While his colleagues focused on smashing atoms, he spent his spare time creating HTTP and a whole new system for linking documents across computers. His four-letter protocol transformed how we share information, but what do those letters actually mean?
What does HTTP stand for in web addresses?
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The answer is: Hypertext Transfer Protocol
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, though when Berners-Lee first pitched the idea at CERN, his supervisor scribbled "vague but exciting" on the proposal and promptly forgot about it. Lucky for us, Berners-Lee didn't.
He kept coding away between his actual assignments, building the first web server "httpd" in a corner of his CERN office. The whole thing started because he was tired of watching brilliant physicists waste time running around with floppy disks just to share their papers.
The "hypertext" part came from an old idea that had been floating around computer science for decades. Ted Nelson dreamed it up for his never-finished Xanadu Project, and he got it from reading about Vannevar Bush's imaginary "memex" machine in an old magazine article. But where others just theorized, Berners-Lee actually built it.
He made the whole thing free for anyone to use. No patents, no royalties, just a simple way for computers to share documents with clickable links. His colleagues thought it was kind of neat but nothing special. Meanwhile, his little protocol now handles billions of requests every second, powering everything from Instagram posts to Wikipedia articles. The next time you see those four letters at the start of a web address, remember they came from one guy who just wanted to help scientists stop walking around with floppy disks.