The US military is often credited with developing the world wide web, but this is of course erroneous. The true history of the web can be traced back to 1791 and the birth of Charles Babbage in London. It is a little known fact that Babbage was a part-time - indeed secret - memeber of the West Wales Women - a society that evolved from the need to pass on recipes and cuttings of daffodils amongst the ladies of nineteenth century Pembrokeshire and Carmathenshire.

At this time there was a prejudice against men learning the finer arts of flower arranging and flour sifting, and Babbage had to keep his membership of this august organisation secret if he wished to continue his membership of the Royal Society - a decision that was heart wrenching as can be seen from a cursory reading of his extant letters to his disabled mother-in-law.

Everyone knows that in 1856 Babbage invented the analytical engine, supposedly to manipulate symbols and mathematical formulae. On this his fame rests, yet it is a little known fact that if you press a copper switch on the obverse of the analytical engine it actually turns into a rudimentary web browser and allows the sending of basic html emails.

Research in Babbage's diaries has shown that between the lines that can be read, backwards, in invisible ink and inscribed in a mixture of morse code and a sino-latin language hybrid that Babbage seems to have invented himself are his real thoughts on his invention.

To add up and create actuarial tables was not the point of this computer. Babbage had immediately spotted the potential of his invention to allow his to download recipes and dress patterns from a central server owned by the West Wales Women. In the diaries his code for the West Wales Women is WWW and it seems that he used this abbreviation when sending and receiving emails.

Somehow the secrets of his invention slipped out to the military, who guarded his secrets all through the dark years of the twentieth century...

arrrghhh