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In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]. It comprised various companies willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that anyone could easily adopt them.<ref>{{cite web|title=Patent Policy—5&nbsp;February&nbsp;2004|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|date=5 February 2004|url=http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/|access-date=25 May 2008}}</ref>
In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]. It comprised various companies willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that anyone could easily adopt them.<ref>{{cite web|title=Patent Policy—5&nbsp;February&nbsp;2004|publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|date=5 February 2004|url=http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy-20040205/|access-date=25 May 2008}}</ref>


Berners-Lee participated in Curl Corp's attempt to develop and promote the [[Curl (programming language)|Curl programming language]].<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/12/29/business/web-inventor-tim-berners-lee-wants-personal-empowerment-users-through-his-data-startup/| title = Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee wants 'personal empowerment' for users, through his data startup | website= The Boston Globe | date=29 December 2020}}</ref>
For more information, see [[wikipedia:Tim_Berners-Lee|Wikipedia]].
 
In 2001, Berners-Lee became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust, having previously lived in [[Colehill]] in [[Wimborne Minster|Wimborne]], [[East Dorset]].<ref>Klooster, John W., (2009), [https://books.google.com/books?id=WKuG-VIwID8C&dq=tim+berners+lee++-+east+dorset+heritage+trust&pg=PA611 ''Icons of Invention: the makers of the modern world from Gutenberg to Gates''], ABC-CLIO, p. 611.</ref> In 2004, he accepted a chair in computer science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, [[University of Southampton]], Hampshire, to work on the [[Semantic Web]].<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Berners-Lee | first1 = T. | author-link1 = Tim Berners-Lee| last2 = Hendler | first2 = J. | author-link2 = James Hendler| last3 = Lassila | first3 = O. | author-link3 = Ora Lassila| doi = 10.1038/scientificamerican0501-34 | title = The Semantic Web | journal = Scientific American | volume = 2841| issue = 5 | pages = 34 | year = 2001 | bibcode = 2001SciAm.284e..34B }}</ref><ref>{{cite web| title = Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web inventor, to join ECS| publisher=World Wide Web Consortium|date= 2 December 2004| url = http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/news/658| access-date=25 May 2008 }}</ref>
 
In a ''[[The Times|Times]]'' article in October 2009, Berners-Lee admitted that [[Uniform Resource Identifier#Syntax|the initial pair of slashes]] ("//") in a web address were "unnecessary". He told the newspaper that he easily could have designed web addresses without the slashes. "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said in his lighthearted apology.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8306631.stm|title=Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes|publisher=BBC |date= 14 October 2009|access-date=14 October 2009}}</ref>
 
Since 2021, Berners-Lee has been an advisory board member of [[Proton Foundation]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://proton.me/blog/sir-tim-berners-lee-advisory-board|title=Sir Tim Berners-Lee joins Proton's advisory board|first=Andy|last=Yen |publisher=Proton|date=8 September 2021 }}</ref>
 
== Books ==
* {{Cite book |last1=Berners-Lee |first1=Tim |last2=Fischetti |first2=Mark |date=September 22, 1999 |title=Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor |url=https://archive.org/details/weavingweborigin00bern_0 |url-access=registration |edition=First hardcover |location=San Francisco|publisher=HarperBusiness |isbn=0062515861 |oclc=41238513}}
* {{Cite book |last=Berners-Lee |first=Tim |date=September 9, 2025 |title=This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5CU4EQAAQBAJ |edition=First hardcover |location=New York |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=978-0374612467 |oclc=1478325766}}


==References==
==References==
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Revision as of 10:36, 6 January 2026

Template:Pp-vandalism Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English

Sir
Tim Berners-Lee
OM KBE FRS RDI FRSA DFBCS FREng
Sir Tim Berners Lee arriving at the Guildhall to receive the Honorary Freedom of the City of London
Berners-Lee in 2024
Born
Timothy John Berners-Lee

Template:Birth date and age
London, England
Other namesTemplate:Hlist
EducationQueen's College, Oxford (BA)
Known forInvention of the World Wide Web
Spouses
Jane Northcote
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(m. 1976, divorced)​
Nancy Carlson
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(m. 1990; div. Template:Str ≠ len)​
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(m. 2014)​
Children2 children
3 step-children
ParentsTemplate:Unbulleted list
AwardsTemplate:Ubil
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsTemplate:Hlist
WebsiteTemplate:URL
Signature
File:Tim Berners-Lee signature.svg

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955),[1] also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, HTML, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow at the University of Oxford[2] and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[3][4]

Berners-Lee proposed an information management system on 12 March 1989[5][6] and implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November.[7][8][9][10][11] He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web's subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web. He co-founded (with Rosemary Leith) the World Wide Web Foundation. In 2009, he was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.[12][13]

Berners-Lee was previously a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com founder's chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[14] He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI)[15] and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.[16][17] In 2011, he was named a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation.[18] He is a founder and president of the Open Data Institute and is an advisor at social network MeWe.[19] In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work.[20][21] He received the 2016 Turing Award "for inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale".[22] He was named in Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and has received a number of other accolades for his invention.[23]

Career and research

After graduation, Berners-Lee worked as an engineer at the telecommunications company Plessey in Poole, Dorset.[24] In 1978, he joined D. G. Nash in Ferndown, Dorset, where he helped create typesetting software for printers.[24]

Berners-Lee worked as an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980. While in Geneva, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.[25] To demonstrate it, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE.[26]

After leaving CERN in late 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems, Ltd, in Bournemouth, Dorset.[27] He ran the company's technical side for three years.[28] The project he worked on was a "real-time remote procedure call" which gave him experience in computer networking.[27] In 1984, he returned to CERN as a fellow.[26]

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet:

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File:First Web Server.jpg
This NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first web server.

Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in March 1989 and redistributed it in 1990. It then was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall, who called his proposals "vague, but exciting".[29] Robert Cailliau had independently proposed a project to develop a hypertext system at CERN, and joined Berners-Lee as a partner in his efforts to get the web off the ground.[26] They used similar ideas to those underlying the ENQUIRE system to create the World Wide Web, for which Berners-Lee designed and built the first web browser. His software also functioned as an editor (called WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP operating system), and the first Web server, CERN httpd (Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon).

Berners-Lee published the first website, which described the project itself, on 20 December 1990; it was available to the Internet from the CERN network. The site provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server and a website.[30][31][32][33] On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee first posted, on Usenet, a public invitation for collaboration with the WorldWideWeb project.[34]

In a list of 80 cultural moments that shaped the world, chosen by a panel of 25 eminent scientists, academics, writers and world leaders in 2016, the invention of the World Wide Web was ranked number one, with the entry stating: "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."[35]

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that anyone could easily adopt them.[36]

For more information, see Wikipedia.

References

  1. ↑ Template:Who's Who
  2. ↑ "Tim Berners-Lee". Department of Computer Science. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  3. ↑ "Sir Tim Berners-Lee joins Oxford's Department of Computer Science". ox.ac.uk. University of Oxford. 27 October 2016. Retrieved 18 September 2018.
  4. ↑ "Tim Berners-Lee | MIT CSAIL". www.csail.mit.edu. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  5. ↑ Foundation, Web (12 March 2019). "30 years on, what's next #ForTheWeb?". World Wide Web Foundation.
  6. ↑ "info.cern.ch – Tim Berners-Lee's proposal". cern.ch. Info.cern.ch. Retrieved 21 December 2011.
  7. ↑ Tim Berners Lee's own reference. The exact date is unknown.
  8. ↑ Berners-Lee, Tim; Mark Fischetti (1999). Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. Britain: Orion Business. ISBN 978-0-7528-2090-3.
  9. ↑ "Long Live the Web" (2010). Scientific American 303 (6): 80–85. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1210-80. Template:PMID. w:Bibcode: 2010SciAm.303f..80B. 
  10. ↑ "Web science emerges" (2008). Scientific American 299 (4): 76–81. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1008-76. Template:PMID. w:Bibcode: 2008SciAm.299d..76S. 
  11. ↑ "Computer Science: Enhanced: Creating a Science of the Web" (2006). Science 313 (5788): 769–771. doi:10.1126/science.1126902. Template:PMID. 
  12. ↑ "Timothy Berners-Lee Elected to National Academy of Sciences". Dr. Dobb's Journal. Retrieved 9 June 2009.
  13. ↑ Template:Cite press release
  14. ↑ Schorow, Stephanie (5 January 2007). "Draper Prize". mit.edu. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  15. ↑ "People". The Web Science Research Initiative. Archived from the original on 28 June 2008. Retrieved 17 January 2011.
  16. ↑ "MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (homepage)". mit.edu. Cci.mit.edu. Retrieved 15 August 2010.
  17. ↑ "MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (people)". Cci.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 11 June 2010. Retrieved 15 August 2010.
  18. ↑ Bratt, Steve (29 September 2011). "Sir Tim Berners-Lee Named to the Ford Foundation Board". World Wide Foundation. Retrieved 22 August 2017.
  19. ↑ Shukman, Harry; Bridge, Mark (8 January 2019). "Sir Tim Berners-Lee's app MeWe is used by neo-Nazis and perverts". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
  20. ↑ "Web's inventor gets a knighthood". BBC News. 31 December 2003. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  21. ↑ "Creator of the web turns knight". BBC News. 16 July 2004. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  22. ↑ "A. M. Turing Award". Association for Computing Machinery. 2016. Retrieved 4 April 2017.
  23. ↑ Quittner, Joshua (29 March 1999). "Tim Berners Lee—Time 100 People of the Century". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on 16 October 2007.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 "Berners-Lee Longer Biography". w3.org. World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  25. ↑ "Berners-Lee's original proposal to CERN". w3.org. World Wide Web Consortium. March 1989. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Stewart, Bill. "Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, and the World Wide Web". Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Berners-Lee, Tim. "Frequently asked questions". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 22 July 2010.
  28. ↑ Grossman, Wendy (15 July 1996). "All you never knew about the Net ...". The Independent.
  29. ↑ "Ten Years Public Domain for the Original Web Software". CERN. Archived from the original on 16 November 2010. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
  30. ↑ "Welcome to info.cern.ch, the website of the world's first-ever web server". CERN. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  31. ↑ "World Wide Web—Archive of world's first website". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  32. ↑ "World Wide Web—First mentioned on USENET". 6 August 1991. Archived from the original on 12 May 2008. Retrieved 25 May 2008.
  33. ↑ "He caught us all in the Web!". The Hindu. 1 September 2018. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  34. ↑ Van der Hiel, Amy (4 August 2016). "25 Years ago the world changed forever". W3C. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
  35. ↑ "80 moments that shaped the world". British Council. Archived from the original on 30 June 2016. Retrieved 13 May 2016.
  36. ↑ "Patent Policy—5 February 2004". World Wide Web Consortium. 5 February 2004. Retrieved 25 May 2008.

Further reading

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