Web’s Inventor Awarded Knighthood

Released on: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 3:00 PM

Web’s Inventor Awarded Knighthood

Just call him “Sir”.  Tim Berners-Lee, dubbed the “Father of the Web”, has been awarded a knighthood for his pioneering work.  Over10 years ago he came up to organize, link, and browse net pages.  In 2004 it is still the basis of the net as we know it.  Berners-Lee commented that this honor is an acknowledgement that the net was not just a “passing trend”.

Berners-Lee created the web in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and offered it for free on the net. 

Berners-Lee saw his invention as just another program.  He originally wanted it to help increase collaboration and understanding among scientists.  He recently told BBC’s Go Digital program that the idea was that by writing something together, and “as people worked on it, they could iron out misunderstanding.”

Berners-Lee created his hypertext program with the goal of helping scientists share research findings across a computer network.  His original name for the program was “the net”, but it came into popular use as the “world wide web.” 

Born in London in 1955, Sir Tim currently resides in Massachusetts where he heads up the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

Editor’s note:  For Berners-Lee on more tech topics, read reference section

Sources: BBC, Time Magazine

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