If you’re online, using the Internet, than you need to know about Tim Berners-Lee, the instrumental force behind creating what we now know as the World Wide Web.
Who is Tim Berners-Lee?
Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955) is best known for being the person attributed with the creation of the World Wide Web. He originally came up with the idea of sharing and organizing information from any computer system in any geographical location by using a system of hyperlinks (simple textual connections that “linked” one piece of content to the next) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), a way that computers could receive and retrieve Web pages.
Berners-Lee also created HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the standard programming language behind every Web page, as well as a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) system that gave every Web page its unique designation.
The inspiration behind the creation
While working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee grew increasingly frustrated with how information was being shared and organized between him and his colleagues. Every computer at CERN stored different information which required unique log-ins, and not every computer could be easily accessed, which resulted in some significant slowdowns of work. This frustrating situation sparked Berners-Lee to come up with a simple proposal for information management, which was the World Wide Web (the link goes to the original proposal, definitely an important piece of early Web history).
Did Tim Berners-Lee invent the Internet?
This is a common misconception. No, Tim Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet. The Internet was created in the late 1960’s as a collaborative effort between several universities and the U.S. Department of Defense (ARPANET). Tim Berners-Lee used the already existing Internet as the foundation for how the World Wide Web would function; basically harnessing the existing platform and making it exponentially more useful.
For more on the early days of the Internet and how the Web got started, read Web History 101: How the Web Got Started.
The Internet and the Web aren’t the same thing, right?
The Internet is a vast network, comprised of many different computer networks and cables and wireless devices, all interconnected. The Web, on the other hand, is information (content, text, images, movies, sound, etc.) that can be found using connections (hyperlinks) that connect to other hyperlinks on the Web.
We use the Internet to connect to other computers and networks; we use the Web to locate information. The World Wide Web could not exist without the Internet as its foundation.
What’s the story behind the name?
According to the official Tim Berners-Lee FAQ, the phrase “World Wide Web” was chosen for its alliterative quality and because it best described the Web’s global, decentralized format (i.e., a web). Since those early days the phrase has shortened in common usage to just being referred to as the Web.
What was the first Web page ever created?
A copy of the first Web page ever created by Tim Berners-Lee can be found at The World Wide Web Project. It’s a fun way to really see how far the Web has come in just a few short years. In fact, Tim Berners-Lee used his office NeXT computer to act as the world’s first web server.
After he created the Web, what did Tim Berners-Lee do next?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Founder and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, an organization aimed at developing sustainable Web standards. He also works as the director of the World Wide Web Foundation, a co-director of the Web Science Trust, and is a professor at the University of Southampton’s Computer Science Department.
A more detailed look at all of Tim Berners-Lee’s involvements and awards can be found at his official biography page.