The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.

As says the intro to the first ever webpage, still at its original URL.

Clearly as it has links to a few other sites - back in the days when a short contents page covered all your web-searching needs - it’s not the very first version of the first page. Here’s a recreation of more what it actually looked like, courtesy of CERN.

Here’s how they explained the intent of the system:

The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone

Ah, the blissful innocence of yesteryear…