Tim Berners Lee
Before there was the public internet there was the internet's precursor ARPAnet or Advanced Research Projects Agency Networks. The ARPAnet opened up in 1969 and was rapidly assumed by civilian computer nerds who had now discovered a means to share the few great computers that existed at that time. Tim Berners-Lee was the man guiding the development of the World Wide Web (with assistance naturally), the shaping of HTML (hypertext markup language) used to produce web pages, HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators).
Born in London, England June 8, 1955, Tim Berners-Lee's mother and father were both mathematicians who were part of the team that programmed Manchester University's Mark I, the world's first commercial, stored program computer, distributed by Ferranti Ltd. Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at Oxford University, England, 1976. While there he made his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 processor and an old television. He spent two years with Plessey Telecommunications Ltd a major UK Telecom equipment manufacturer, working on distributed transaction systems, message relays, and bar code technology. In 1978 Tim departed Plessey to join D.G Nash Ltd, where he wrote amongst other things typesetting software for intelligent printers, and a multitasking operating system.
A year and a half spent as an independent consultant included a six month stretch (Jun-Dec 1980) as advisor software engineer at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. While there, he wrote for his personal use his first program for storing information including utilizing random associations. Called "Enquire", and never released, this program developed the conceptual foundation for the future development of the World Wide Web.
From 1981 until 1984, Tim worked at John Poole's Image Computer Systems Ltd, with technical planning responsibility. Work here included real time control firmware, graphics and communications software, and a general macro language. In 1984, he assumed a fellowship at CERN, to work on distributed real-time systems for scientific data acquisition and system control. Among other matters, he worked on FASTBUS system software and configured a diversified remote process call system.
In 1989, Berners-Lee presented a proposal at CERN to produce an information system that would make a web of information. Berners-Lee attempted to sell his new creation at CERN as a means to link data between the many different systems at CERN. However the bureaucracy at CERN was sluggish in recognizing his endeavors.
At first, his proposal obtained no response, but he began working on his idea anyway. His proposal was a global hypertext project, to be known as the World Wide Web. Supported by the earlier "Enquire" work, it was configured to permit people to work together by uniting their knowledge in a web of hypertext documents. He wrote the first World Wide Web server, "httpd", and the first client, "WorldWideWeb" a what-you-see-is-what-you-get hypertext browser/editor which ran in the NeXTStep environment. A web server is the software that stores web pages on a computer and makes them available through the Domain Name System to be accessed by others. Berners-Lee set up the first web server called "info.cern.ch." at CERN.
Berners-Lee then turned to the Internet community. This work was began in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" first made accessible within CERN in December, and on the Internet as a whole in the summer of 1991. He made his WorldWideWeb browser and web server software available to Internet Providers and posted notices to several newsgroups including alt.hypertext. The Web began to explode as computer enthusiasts around the globe started setting up their own web servers. Frequently the owners of the new sites would email Berners-Lee and he would link to their sites from the CERN site.
As the number of users on the Web grew it became more appealing as a medium. Scientists, who were already accustomed to sharing data on the Internet started to embrace the Web. It was easier to post information on the Web one time than respond repeatedly to multiple requests for the same information. They also no longer had to worry whether or not the other scientists utilized a different operating system. Government agencies who had obligations to make their information public likewise began moving towards the Web.
As greater numbers began using the Web the demand for more point-and-click browsers became obvious. Berners-Lee had developed his WorldWideWeb browser on a very technical personal computer called a NeXT. What was called for now was web browser that Mac, PC, and Unix users could use. This demand was soon met as others, for the most part students, began creating new browsers. For example, Students at the Helsinki University of Technology wrote Erwise—a browser for Unix machines, and Pei Wei, a U.C. Berkeley student wrote Viola. Colleagues of Berners-Lee at CERN wrote a browser for Mac machines called Samba. Marc Andreesen, a student at the University of Illinois, with the assistance of fellow students, produced the Mosaic browser.
Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the conception of the Web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. His first specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were fine-tuned and talked over in larger circles as the Web technology spread. New browsers and the growing quantity of information that could be discovered on the Web made it an ever more appealing medium. It grew exponentially, both in the number of sites and users. The number of visitors to the info.cern.ch server was increasing by a factor of ten every year. By the summer of 1993, Berner-Lee's site was catching ten thousand hits a day. His dream of a global information space was at last materializing.
In 1994, Tim joined the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS)at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1999, he became the first holder of the 3Com Founders chair. He is Director of the World Wide Web Consortium which coordinates Web development internationally, with teams at MIT, at INRIA in France, and at Keio University in Japan. The Consortium holds as its goal to lead the Web to its full potential, ensuring its stability through rapid evolution and revolutionary transformations of its usage.
Berners-Lee is the author of "Weaving the Web", on the the past present and future of the Web. He has also authored a number of web related documents, including those in the HTML and HTTP sections. Among other honours and awards, in December, 1993, Berners-Lee and Cailliau shared the ACM Software System Award with Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina of NCSA for their endeavors in developing the Web. He was presented the Albert Medal of the Royal Society of the Arts in 2002 by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and dubbed a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II on July 16, 2004, using the sword that had belonged to her father, King George VI.