Inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee (1955–) was born on this day in London, England. His parents were computer scientists who inspired his love for programming.

His idea for the Web came to him in 1980 while trying to organize his notes. He wanted to track “all the random associations one comes across in real life,” knowing that while “brains are supposed to be so good at remembering, sometimes mine wouldn’t.”

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, he envisioned the Web as a collaborative medium for researchers. He developed hypertext and invented HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

With HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), Berners-Lee created the rules for linking documents across computers worldwide.

“We live in a fractal world,” he observed.

On August 6, 1991, he launched the first website, info.cern.ch, and introduced the “WWW project” as a means “to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.”

Though he called himself “quite an ordinary person,” Berners-Lee was knighted in 2004 and continues to lead the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to work and discover the full potential of the Web. “You affect the world by what you browse,” he said.

Imagine… in our lifetime, one man dreaming at a terminal... and suddenly the entire world is connected—ideas, stories, hearts, art.

✨Tim Berners-Lee is included in the Top 100 Innovators for creating the World Wide Web—and choosing to share it freely, empowering connection across the planet. 🌐💡