Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt.com, a tech start-up which uses, promotes and helps develop the open source Solid platform. ... A graduate of Oxford University, Sir Tim invented the Web while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in 1989. Early life and education Berners-Lee was born on 8 June 1955 in London, England,[26] the eldest of the four children of Mary Lee Woods and Conway Berners-Lee; his brother Mike is a professor of ecology, and climate change management. His parents were computer scientists who worked on the first commercially built computer, the Ferranti Mark 1. He attended Sheen Mount Primary School, and then went on to attend south west London's Emanuel School from 1969 to 1973, at the time a direct grant grammar school, which became an independent school in 1975.[1][18] A keen trainspotter as a child, he learnt about electronics from tinkering with a model railway.[27] He studied at The Queen's College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, where he received a first-class bachelor of arts degree in physics.[1][26] While at university, Berners-Lee made a computer out of an old television set, which he bought from a repair shop.[28] Career and research Berners-Lee, 2005 After graduation, Berners-Lee worked as an engineer at the telecommunications company Plessey in Poole, Dorset.[26] In 1978, he joined D. G. Nash in Ferndown, Dorset, where he helped create type-setting software for printers.[26] Berners-Lee worked as an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980. While in Geneva, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.[29] To demonstrate it, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE.[30] After leaving CERN in late 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems, Ltd, in Bournemouth, Dorset.[31] He ran the company's technical side for three years.[32] The project he worked on was a "real-time remote procedure call" which gave him experience in computer networking.[31] In 1984, he returned to CERN as a fellow.[30] In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web[33] ... Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system.[34] This NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's first web server Berners-Lee wrote his proposal in March 1989 and, in 1990, redistributed it. It then was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall, who called his proposals 'vague, but exciting'.[35] He used similar ideas to those underlying the ENQUIRE system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser. His software also functioned as an editor (called WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP operating system), and the first Web server, CERN HTTPd (short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon). Mike Sendall buys a NeXT cube for evaluation, and gives it to Tim [Berners-Lee]. Tim's prototype implementation on NeXTStep is made in the space of a few months, thanks to the qualities of the NeXTStep software development system. This prototype offers WYSIWYG browsing/authoring! Current Web browsers used in 'surfing the Internet' are mere passive windows, depriving the user of the possibility to contribute. During some sessions in the CERN cafeteria, Tim and I try to find a catching name for the system. I was determined that the name should not yet again be taken from Greek mythology..... Tim proposes 'World-Wide Web'. I like this very much, except that it is difficult to pronounce in French... by Robert Cailliau, 2 November 1995.[36]