Who Invented World Wide Web

The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners- Lee in 1989. He is a computer scientist and director at World Web Consortium (W3C).

History of Web and Sir Tim

Sir Tim was born in London. His parents were computer scientists. He was interested in trains and kept a model in his bedroom. He made several electronic gadgets to control trains. Eventually, he started loving electronics more than trains. After his college, he assembled a computer from an old television. Sir Tim graduated from Oxford University.

Tim Berners-Lee started working as a software engineer at CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) after completing his graduation. At CERN, where scientists came from different parts of the world, Sir Tim realized a massive problem of sharing information. He knew that he had the potential to solve this problem. He noticed that different information is available on different computers, but one had to log in to another computer to get information stored in it. By then, computers were connected through the internet, and Sir Tim soon realized that hypertext could be used for effective information sharing.

Making of the World Wide Web

Tim summarized what we now call web in "Information Management: A Proposal" and shared it with his boss Mike Sendell, at CERN. Unfortunately, his proposal was not accepted. However, his boss gave him time to work on it. Hence, he started working on Steve Jobs's NeXT Computer.

Tim wrote the fundamentals of the world wide web by the end of 1990. These technologies are still the foundation of the web and are as follows -

1. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): A language for formatting web.
2. Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Also known as URL, it is unique to each resource available on the web.
3. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Connects server and sends pages from HTML to the user.

Sir Tim was successful in writing the first web page, "WorldWideWeb.app". Additionally, he developed the first web server, "httpd". Eventually, the first web page was launched on the internet in the 1990s. Communities were invited to join the web and connect for information sharing in 1991.

Developments in World Wide Web

The world wide web started growing; Tim thought that the true potential of the web could be explored and utilized effectively only if people can use the web for free and it becomes accessible everywhere. Tim and others proposed this idea at CERN. In 1993, CERN finally announced that it would make code available for free and forever. This decision revolutionized the way people shared information and paved the way for creativity and innovation.

Tim founded the World Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994 after leaving CERN. W3C is an international community whose motto is to develop open web standards. Sir Tim is still the Director at W3C.

Revolution of ideas through the web

The web community explored and generated ideas that changed the way we use the web today. Following are some of these revolutionary ideas -

• Decentralization of the web: No central authority controls the web. There is complete freedom of what one wishes to post on the web.
• Net Neutrality: Net neutrality is non-discrimination, implying that even if two web users pay different sums of money for the internet and have different quality of service, they can share information on the same platform.
• Bottom-up design approach: Everyone could participate and experiment in the code rather than just experts writing code and controlling the web.
• Universality: All computers communicate through the same language even if the users belong to different regions, follow different cultures, and speak different languages.
• Consensus: There is a transparent system in W3C, and anyone can participate in reforming standards through a procedure.

Impact of the web on people

With the connecting of information on the computers, users also connected, widening the global network of people. Location was no more a barrier to find reliable information. Open networks, accessible for any internet user, gave rise to science and research, mathematics, and nuclear science developments. The general public could now know what scientists have researched for depth knowledge of any topic, which was utterly unimaginable without the web. The web has significantly impacted youth the changing the way they gain knowledge and choose their career paths by exploring their interests. Education became free and accessible to everyone. The web has revolutionized lives not just by connecting information but by connecting knowledge and people.