Blackjack has always been a very popular game, usually played among friends in a casual set up. What appealed to most players was it the fast moving nature of the game. However friends and blackjack sometimes didn't go down too well together.

Probably that why when it began to find its way onto the casinos of Europe and especially the United States in the late nineteenth century, it became amongst the most favourite table games.

Some hundred years later, a young British expert in physics by the name of Tim Berners-Lee decided that his mission in life would be to design a system where scientists from all over the world could correspond with each other through this new medium that were called computers.

Why just scientists? Because at that time computers were usually only found in universities. So complicated and bulky were they, that the usually filled an entire room.

Berners-Lee decided that he would create a global computer language, His first effort called " Enquire" seemed to work, although it could only access one other local university However Berners-Lee persevered and it soon transpired that other Universities could communicate with his university and others through accessing an ever growing series of links.

Unbelievable though it may seem, it was just twenty years ago that this global communications revolution which Berners- Lee called the "World Wide Web" began.

Now there are almost four hundred million computers in the World that are linked to each other through the web. And most amazing fact of all is that Tim Berners- Lee, the man that started it all never made a single penny out of his brainchild.

Berners-Lee's baby was to change the World in so many ways. The way that people work, the way that they buy products and services and the way that they spend their leisure time. And almost always for the better.

People have always liked to visit casinos as part of their leisure activities, but it wasn't always possible for a lot of reasons. However it didn't take too long before someone figured that if people couldn't come to casinos, then they would bring the casinos, and with them online blackjack to them, through their computers and internet connection.

Again it seems unbelievable but the first online casinos only began to appear at the beginning of the 21st century. In their early days they were pretty primitive affairs prone to freeze in mid-deal, with very basic graphics and software beset with bugs and glitches.

However as the internet has developed, so has the online casino and now it is possible to play blackjack in as comfortable a setting as any player could hope for.

And it's all down to a few friendly card players and Tim Berners-Lee.