The history of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) dates back to the early days of the World Wide Web. HTML was first introduced in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist who is widely considered to be the inventor of the World Wide Web.
The first version of HTML, HTML 1.0, was a simple markup language that allowed web developers to create basic web pages with headings, paragraphs, and hyperlinks. It was designed to be easy to learn and use, and did not include many of the features that are now considered essential for web development, such as support for images and tables.
Over the years, HTML continued to evolve and new versions were released, each with more advanced features and capabilities. HTML 2.0 was released in 1995 and introduced support for tables, image maps, and forms. HTML 3.2, released in 1997, introduced support for frames and improved support for style sheets.
In 1998, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded with the goal of creating a standard for web development. The W3C took over the development of HTML and released HTML 4.0 in 1997. HTML 4.0 introduced a number of new features, including support for cascading style sheets (CSS) and multimedia content.
In 2000, the W3C began work on a new version of HTML, called XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language). XHTML was designed to be more strict and well-formed than previous versions of HTML, and was based on the XML standard.
In 2014, the W3C released HTML5, the latest version of HTML. HTML5 introduced a number of new features, including support for multimedia content, canvas and video elements, and improved support for mobile devices.
Today, HTML is an essential part of web development, and is used to create websites and web applications that are used by millions of people around the world.