Page 45 - Great Elizabethans

PROGRAMMING GENIUS
After leaving university, Tim worked as a programmer for a company which made traffic lights. Then, for a while, he worked on software for CERN, the huge European physics laboratory. While he was there, Tim invented a program called ENQUIRE, which stored information in ‘links’ that allowed a user to move easily between files. This became known as ‘hypertext’.
After that, Tim designed many different computer systems before he went back to CERN,
this time to work on their computer network. In 1989, he made a plan to create a hypertext system
that would join with the Internet – which connected computers around the world – to allow scientists
to see each other’s files and results without emailing all the time. It was this plan that would become the World Wide Web, uniting the scrappy beginnings of the Internet into a huge international network.
“The Web does not just connect machines, it connects people.” THE WORLD WIDE WEB
When Tim was given permission to develop his idea, he went on to design and build the first web browser and editor. The first site on the World Wide Web went live on 6th August 1991. It explained what the Web was and how to set up a server.
Tim didn’t realise then how important his invention would be, or how the Web’s popularity would explode, changing the way people worked and learned and talked to each other. Without his work, we might have no Google, no Wikipedia, no YouTube – and the Internet might belong to just a few people with the special skills to use it or enough money to buy access to it. One of the most important things about the World Wide Web was that Tim made it available to everyone, without needing to pay or sign up to anything. He believes that the Web should remain open to all, and that everyone should be able to edit it and work within it. He also believes that scientists who work with computers have a duty to keep the Web a safe place for its users.
QUIET ACHIEVER
Tim has been honoured in many ways for his world-changing achievement. He is now Sir Tim Berners-Lee and holds positions at many universities. Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, and he was the first winner of Finland’s Millennium Technology Prize. Despite his fame, Tim doesn’t live like a celebrity. When he isn’t writing code or meeting world leaders, he likes to spend time quietly with his family.
Tim was part of the London Olympics opening ceremony in 2012. As the invention of the World Wide Web was acted out, he tweeted: “This is for everyone”.
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