Tim Berners-Lee Biography
Early Life
Tim Berners-Lee was born on June 8, 1955, in London,
England. His parents, Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods,
worked on the first commercially-built computer, and resided
in the southwest region of London. Also known as Sir Timothy
John Berners-Lee, his early education took place at Sheen
Mount Primary School, Emanuel School, and concluded with a
physics degree at Queen's College, Oxford. While studying
at Oxford, Berners-Lee managed to build his own computer out of
spare parts, was caught hacking, and was even banned from using
the university's computers.
Career
Tim Berners-Lee is best known as the inventor of the World
Wide Web, which he proposed in March of 1989. He was able
to make the first successful communication between a
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via
the Internet sometime around November of 1989. After his
graduation from Queen's College, Oxford, he worked as an
engineer at a telecommunicaitions company called Plessey.
A few years later, Berners-Lee worked as an independent
contractor at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research),
where he proposed a project based on hypertext to facilitate
sharing and updating information among researchers. This was the first
prototype he created, which was called Enquire. Berners-Lee
saw that there was an opportunity to join hypertext with the
Internet, so he created the World Wide Web, which brought together
existing ideas of hypertext, the Internet, and multifont text
objects. Berners-Lee's initial proposal in March of 1989 was revised
in 1990 with the help of Robert Cailliau. This proposal was the
foundation of the design and building of the first Web browser.
The first website that was built was at CERN within the border
of France and was posted online on August 6, 1991. The website
included an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and
how someone could use it. The first server was info.cern.ch,
which Berners-Lee advertised in various newsgroups to gain
interest and recruit Web users. His advertising was successful
after people all over the world began creating their own web
servers. Berners-Lee was proactive and used Web server creators'
and users' feedback to create discussion groups to further evolve
his design of the World Wide Web.
Current Work
Tim Berners-Lee is believed to have a net worth of approximately
$50,000,000 and is recognized as a member of the World Wide
Web Hall of Fame. Currently, he is working with the UK
Government to help make data more accessible on the Web. He is
a senior research scientist at MIT, where he is also the
first holder of the 3Com Founders Chair.
In 2009, Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Foundation
in order to advance the Web as a medium for positive change.
Berners-Lee views the Web as a place that should be a safe
outlet for people to browse and express their voices, without
being controlled, monitored, or interfered.
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