Invented by TimBernersLee while he was at CERN as a method to link academic papers together instead of merely using bibliographic references.
The WorldWideWeb runs on the HTTP-TCP/IP protocol and HTML to display (most) webpages. Although the term is usually considered synonymous with TheInternet, the difference is that TheInternet includes several more protocols. Some of these protocols (that, incidentally, never really took off or lost momentum with the rise of the WorldWideWeb) are used to display content, such as Gopher. Others, like IRC or Jabber, are used for CommunicationMediums?, .
http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html