Ian Whyte

History and Structure of the internet

Tim Berners-Lee was born in 1955 on the 8^th of June. He is a British engineer and computer scientist as well as a MIT professor who is credited with inventing the world wide web. In 1980 he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to allow sharing and updating among researchers. He came up with the first proposal in1989 with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, He implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the internet. Tim Berners-Lee is also the director of the world Wide Web Consortium and the World Wide Web Federation. He is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Due to his work the use of the World Wide Web became widespread in the 1990's and is still extremely important today.

Tim Berners-Lee was the man who lead the development of the World Wide Web, HTML which is used to create web pages, HTTP and URL's. All of which were developed between the years 1989 and 1991. Tim Berners-Lee has also been called the father of the internet because of his work just like Vincent Cerf.

The World Wide Web is commonly known as the web or just its abbreviated form WWW. It is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed using the internet. Tim Berners-Lee and his Belgian colleague Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext to link and to access information of different kinds as a web of nodes in which a person can browse at will. The Web was different from other hypertext systems that were then available.

HTML was first proposed by Vannevar Bush. He proposed the basics of Hypertext in 1945. This laid the foundation for Berners-Lee and others to invent what they invented. HTML stands for the Hypertext Mark up Language, it is the authoring language for the World Wide Web. HTML is used to define the structure and layout of a web page, how a page looks and any special functions it may have.

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a Networking Protocol for distributed, collaborative, Hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues are credited with inventing the original HTTP protocol. Berners-Lee and his colleagues used HTTP and HTML to establish the World Wide Web.

The Uniform Resource Locator or a URL for short is used to specify where an identified resource is available and also shows you the mechanism for retrieving it. It was created by Tim Berners-Lee and his fellow colleagues in 1994 as part of the Uniform Resource Identifier. Perhaps the best known example today of a Uniform Resource Locator would the address of a web page on the World Wide Web For example Http:/www.example.com.

Berners-Lee has not become wealthy off his work unlike Bill Gates. Instead he has committed himself to making the web universally accessible without any patents or royalties due. To ensure the web was Free from the governmental or corporation control he set up the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. This organisation helps to mediate the aims and problems of companies involved with the development of the World Wide Web. They also help establish protocols that work with both designers of the web and web browsers.

The World Wide Web Federation is dedicated to making the internet available to more and more people trough out the world. It was formed on September 14^th by Tim Berners-Lee. The aims of this organisation is “to advance one web that is free and open”, “to expand the web's capability and robustness” and “to extend the webs benefits for all people on the planet”.

I believe it is fair to say the Tim Berners-Lee has earned the nickname father of the internet like men such as Vincent Cerf. He has contributed to such important things that we use in everyday life. He is most famous for having invented the World Wide Web which we use in everyday life to browse the internet. Berners-Lee believes that everyone should have free access to the internet and he is doing his best to make this a reality his organisation is evidence of this, This shows he has been an important person in the development of the internet and more than likely be a key person in the future.