HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and it was invented by Tim Berners Lee at the same time he created the first web browser. He had seen a tool called Hypercard for the MacIntosh and wanted to create a web of information from the files on all the servers at the CERNparticle physics laboratory. At the time, he had many different computers that used many different kinds of files and he wanted to view all the files from one place using one tool. Thus, he created the browser as the viewing tool. The web browser would handle connecting and viewing the pages. Writing the files in Hyper Text Markup Language HTML to the files on the computers would allow the computers he was connecting to present him with pages the browser tool could read and display for him.
So, as Tim originally designed it, what your web browser shows you isn't the real page. HTML is used behind the scenes to make your web browser do all the strange and wonderful things it does. The HTML tells your browser how to display the page, where to put the pictures and text and where the links to other pages go.