5 ms·

Did this man really invent the World Wide Web all on his own?

wiether 1y ago
Did this person even read the article before commenting? > That’s why, in 1993, I convinced my Cern managers to donate the intellectual property of the world wide web, putting it into the public domain. We gave the web away to everyone.
- zx8080 1y ago
  Is the whole idea of CERN a public serve through research and innovation? If so, there was no non-public way to use the http/html research results.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  [flagged]
yawpitch 1y ago
Technically, yes. I mean it took a lot more than just TBL’s contribution to build up to what we have today — for good or ill — but the fundamental idea that is the WWW was his.
Manfred 1y ago
Insofar that’s possible in general. Networking, hyperlink systems, and phone books already existed.
bena 1y ago
The core idea is small enough. And the http protocol sits on top of the stack. Routing, dns, nat, etc all do not matter to http. HTTP is basically “this is how you send a document over the wire”.
odo1242 1y ago
He wrote the very first version of HTTP, the very first version of HTML, and the very first web browser, and gave them away for free (public domain)
- mwcz 1y ago
  Don't forget URL, the most important protocol of them all and the first one Tim had standardized.
jibal 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web > The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN in 1989 and opened to the public in 1993.
freetonik 1y ago
He's the web developer.
- twilightzone 1y ago
  THE web developer, yes.
rexreed 1y ago
Before I first used the Web in 1991, I was on Usenet and of course Telnet and email-based systems, and Gopher also emerged around the same time. So the web didn't come out of nowhere, but the IP behind what we're still using, HTML and HTTP, freed from CERN's IP clutches is a good thing. Interesting that it was freed in 1993, once the momentum of the Web was becoming clear. Might something else have emerged instead if CERN had said no? Who knows. Without the Web, the Internet itself might have stayed in its primarily research and academic domain. The rapid growth of the Web is in part what motivated the commercialization of the Internet and the "Information Superhighway", and then came the entrepeneurs and VCs, and well, here we are. Could it have all happened based on Gopher instead? Who knows.
- s1110 1y ago
  May I ask you how did you use Telnet back then? Was it some text-based system like BBS you connected to?
BlueTemplar 1y ago
No, Super Tim had a trusted sidekick : Al Gore. (j/k)
- jibal 1y ago
  It's a very poor joke, not least because it conflates the World Wide Web with the Internet ... but also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...

Did this person even read the article before commenting? > That’s why, in 1993, I convinced my Cern managers to donate the intellectual property of the world wide web, putting it into the public domain. We gave the web away to everyone.

zx8080 1y ago
Is the whole idea of CERN a public serve through research and innovation? If so, there was no non-public way to use the http/html research results.
tossandthrow 1y ago
[flagged]

yawpitch 1y ago

Technically, yes. I mean it took a lot more than just TBL’s contribution to build up to what we have today — for good or ill — but the fundamental idea that is the WWW was his.

Manfred 1y ago

Insofar that’s possible in general. Networking, hyperlink systems, and phone books already existed.

bena 1y ago

The core idea is small enough. And the http protocol sits on top of the stack. Routing, dns, nat, etc all do not matter to http. HTTP is basically “this is how you send a document over the wire”.

odo1242 1y ago

He wrote the very first version of HTTP, the very first version of HTML, and the very first web browser, and gave them away for free (public domain)

mwcz 1y ago
Don't forget URL, the most important protocol of them all and the first one Tim had standardized.

jibal 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web > The Web was invented by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee while at CERN in 1989 and opened to the public in 1993.

freetonik 1y ago

He's the web developer.

twilightzone 1y ago
THE web developer, yes.

rexreed 1y ago

Before I first used the Web in 1991, I was on Usenet and of course Telnet and email-based systems, and Gopher also emerged around the same time. So the web didn't come out of nowhere, but the IP behind what we're still using, HTML and HTTP, freed from CERN's IP clutches is a good thing. Interesting that it was freed in 1993, once the momentum of the Web was becoming clear. Might something else have emerged instead if CERN had said no? Who knows. Without the Web, the Internet itself might have stayed in its primarily research and academic domain. The rapid growth of the Web is in part what motivated the commercialization of the Internet and the "Information Superhighway", and then came the entrepeneurs and VCs, and well, here we are. Could it have all happened based on Gopher instead? Who knows.

s1110 1y ago
May I ask you how did you use Telnet back then? Was it some text-based system like BBS you connected to?

BlueTemplar 1y ago

No, Super Tim had a trusted sidekick : Al Gore. (j/k)

jibal 1y ago
It's a very poor joke, not least because it conflates the World Wide Web with the Internet ... but also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...