Tim Berners-Lee Biography

Tim Berners-Lee Biography

Tim Berners Lee has invented something that is becoming as ubiquitous as man himself. It affects us all; it is used by millions of people all over the world

Tim Berners Lee is a British Computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW). He is currently a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which promotes better standards for the world wide web and internet.

He was born on 8th June 1995 in London, England. After doing his A Levels at Emanuel School, he went to Queen’s College, Oxford University. He received a first class degree in physics.

After graduation, he gained employment for a printing firm in Plessey Poole. From 1980, he was employed as an independent contractor at CERN in Switzerland. A key part of his job involved sharing information with researchers in different geographical locations. To help this process, he suggested a project based on the use of hypertext (a language for sharing text electronically)The first prototype was a system known as ENQUIRE.

The internet had been developed since the 1960s as a way to transfer information between different computers. However, Tim Berners Lee sought to make use of internet nodes and combine 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 one 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 the first web server. It was put online in 1991. "Info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded W3C (World Wide Web consortium) at the Laboratory of Computer Science (LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. This is an organisation to try and improve the quality and standard of the world wide web. He could have tried to monetise his creation, but decided to offer the world wide web with no patent and no royalties due. Berners-Lee said if he hadn’t someone else would have come up with a free idea later.

As a founder of the world wide web, Tim Berners Lee has a relatively high profile and he has often spoken up for the freedom of information and net neutrality – arguing that governments should not be involved in censorship of the internet. In 2009, he worked in a project set up by Gordon Brown to help make UK data more publically available. Data.gov.uk

He has received many orders including an OBE, knighthood and Order of Merit – becoming one of only 24 living members entitled to the honour.

Tim Berners Lee was recognised for his invention of the world wide web in the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony.

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 inuagural awards ceremony held in London. The other recipients were Evans Wadongo for solar power development and anti-poverty work in Africa, and media mogul Ted Turner.