All about Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web

Tim Berners Lee is a British computer scientist who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web (WWW). Berners-Lee enabled a system to be able to view web pages (hypertext documents) through the internet. He also serves as a director fo the World Wide WebConsortium (W3C) which overseas standards for the internet and world wide web. Berners-Lee has also been concerned about issues relating to freedom of information and censorship on the internet

Tim Berners Lee was born on 8th June 1955 in London, England. After doing his A Levels at Emanuel School, he went to Queen’s College, Oxford University, where he received a first-class degree in physics. After graduation, he gained employment for a printing firm in Plessey Poole. From 1980, he wasemployed as an independent contractor at CERN in Switzerland. A key part of his job involvedsharing information with researchers in different geographical locations.

Also Read: World Wide Web turns 30! Google celebrates with an animated doodle

To help this process, hesuggested a project based on the use of hypertext. (a language for sharing text electronically) Thefirst prototype was a system known as ENQUIRE. The internet had been developed since the 1960s as a way to transfer information betweendifferent computers. However, Tim Berners Lee sought to make use of internet nodes andcombine it with hypertext and the idea of domains.

Tim Berners Lee later said that all the technology involved in the web had already been developed – ‘hypertext’, internet; his contribution was to put them all together in a comprehensive package. In 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau, he produced the first version of the World Wide Web, the first web browser and the first web server. It was put online in 1991. “Info.cern.ch wasthe address of the world’s first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer atCERN.

The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. Essentially the contribution of the world wide web was to make it easy for people to view hypertext web pages anywhere on the internet. 

Tim Berners-Lee Answers for Young PeopleIn 1994, Berners-Lee founded W3C (World Wide Web consortium) at the Laboratory ofComputer Science (LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. This is anorganisation to try to improve the quality and standard of the world wide web. He could havetried to monetise his creation, but decided to offer the world wide web with no patent and noroyalties due. Berners-Lee said if he hadn’t someone else would have come up with a free idealater.

As a founder of the world wide web, Tim Berners Lee has a relatively high profile and he hasoften spoken up for the freedom of information and net neutrality – arguing that governmentsshould not be involved in censorship of the internet. He has expressed concerns the US maymove to a two tier internet systemWhen I invented the web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Now, hundreds of millionsof people are using it freely.

I am worried that that is going to end in the USA. In 2009, he worked in a project set up by Gordon Brown to help make UK data more publicallyavailable. Data.gov.ukHe has received many orders including an OBE, knighthood and Order of Merit – becoming oneof only 24 living members entitled to the honour. He was knighted in 2004′ for services to theglobal development of the Internet”Tim Berners Lee was recognised for his invention of the world wide web in the 2012 SummerOlympics opening ceremony. He tweeted “this is for everyone” at the 2012 London Olympics.

On 30 March 2011, he was one of the first three recipients of the Mikhail Gorbachev award for “The Man Who Changed the World”, at the inaugural awards ceremony held in London. Theother recipients were Evans Wadongo for solar power development and anti-poverty work inAfrica, and media mogul Ted Turner. He has married twice First to Jane Northcote and he remarried Nancy in 1990. They have three children.

Google celebrates the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web with an animated doodle. Today on occasion of 30th anniversary Lee wrote on Twitter, "I’m taking a 30-hour journey with Web foundation to celebrate the web’s 30th birthday."

I’m taking a 30-hour journey with @webfoundation to celebrate the web’s 30th birthday.First stop @CERN — where it all began.We’ll be visiting London, UK today and finishing in Lagos, Nigeria tomorrow.Follow the celebrations at #Web30 #ForTheWeb. pic.twitter.com/utQlJC8bNj

— Tim Berners-Lee (@timberners_lee) March 12, 2019