Tim Berners-Lee

Hello. My name is Tim Berners-Lee, and I invented something you probably use every day: the World Wide Web. I was born in London, England, on June 8th, 1955. My parents worked with some of the very first computers, so I grew up loving math and electronics. I even built my first computer using an old television.

When I grew up, I became a computer scientist. In the 1980s, I worked at a big science lab in Switzerland called CERN. Scientists there, and all over the world, had a problem. It was very hard to share their research because their information was on different computers that couldn't talk to each other. In 1989, I had an idea. I thought, what if we could connect all this information together like a giant, invisible spider's web? I wrote down my idea and called it the World Wide Web.

My bosses thought it was an interesting idea, so they let me work on it. To make the web work, I had to create a few new things. I invented a special language for making web pages called HTML. I also created a way for computers to send pages to each other called HTTP, and a special address for every page called a URL. In 1990, I built the first-ever web browser to see the pages and the first web server to hold them. The very first website went online in 1991, and it explained my new invention to the world.

I had a very important choice to make. I could have tried to make a lot of money from my invention, but I wanted the web to be for everyone. I believed that people should be able to share ideas and learn from each other freely. So, in 1993, I worked with CERN to make sure the World Wide Web would be free for anyone to use, forever. It was my gift to the world.

Today, I am still working to make sure the web stays open, safe, and helpful for all of us. It makes me so happy to see people using it to learn, create, and connect with each other every single day.