Timothy Berners-Lee, born in London, England, is best known for inventing the World Wide Web. He was the first to propose an information management system to communicate between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. He became successful in doing so in 1989.
Timothy, who is also referred to as TimBL, is also the founder and president of the Open Data Institute and is an advisor at social network MeWe. He is the one who managed to implement the first-ever Web browser and server, which eventually helped the Internet’s unmatched development. He also received the Turing Award for inventing the World Wide Web and algorithms that allowed the Web to grow. So what fueled him to develop the World Wide Web? Let’s find out.
How hypertext came into being?
TimBL went to The Queen’s College, Oxford to pursue his first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics. During his education, he developed a computer using an old TV set, which he purchased from a local repair shop.
After graduating, he took up a job as an engineer at a telecommunication firm, where he was an active member of the team that created typesetting software for printers. He also worked at CERN, where he first proposed a project that revolves around hypertext and allows sharing and updating information among researchers. He built a prototype called ENQUIRE to showcase this method.
Berners-Lee used the ENQUIRE ideas to develop the World Wide Web, for which he created the first web browser. The software used NeXTSTEP OS to run, and the Web server was named CERN HTTPd that stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon.
The world’s first-ever website
The first website he published was to explain the project itself. It was accessible on the Internet using the CERN network. The site allowed users to learn more about the World Wide Web and how they can make use of a browser to set up a web browser. The website also contained information about how to start another website.
The invention of the World Wide Web was awarded as the number one in 80 cultural moments that shaped the world. The entry was stated as, “The fastest growing communications medium of all time, the Internet has changed the shape of modern life forever. We can connect with each other instantly, all over the world.”
A royalty-free technology for all
Three years later, Berners-Lee went to found the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. It featured several firms that wanted to create standards and recommendations to scale up the quality of the Web. TimBL made his idea freely available to all, and no patents or royalties were required to be paid.
The W3C decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, allowing everyone to adopt it without any constraints. Berners-Lee went on to win many awards and honors. He was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 “for services to the global development of the Internet.”
