How was HTTP invented, and what does it actually do?
Three letters you type every day were invented by one physicist at a particle lab.
The answer
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) was created by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989 as the communication protocol for the World Wide Web. It defines how messages are formatted and transmitted between web browsers (clients) and servers: a browser sends an HTTP request ('GET this page'), and the server sends back an HTTP response with the content. HTTPS (the 'S' stands for 'Secure') adds TLS encryption to prevent eavesdropping. HTTP has evolved from version 1.0 (one request per connection) to HTTP/3, which uses Google's QUIC protocol over UDP for dramatically faster page loads.
Source: Mozilla Developer Network
- HTTP
- web
- protocols
- Tim Berners-Lee
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