Tim Berners Lee the Forgotten Inventor

Tim Berners-Lee - 99.9% of the world population have never heard of this man, but the majority have benefited drastically from his invention. Just over 70% of the UK population used his invention every day in 2009, which is expected to rise to 85% this year. What he invented has changed the world, created industries, prevented disasters and improved education beyond any governmental policy. Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web.

Due to my profession, I know all about this man, and speak about him frequently (usually to blank expressions, eventually resulting in me being stood alone!). When I seem shocked that so few people know anything about him, the usual response is “yeah, but you only know him because you are a website developer”. So why is it that only people who work directly in the online field are expected to know who invented the Web (and you would be surprised how many of those people don’t know him either!)? Do we have to be an electrician to know who Edison is? Or a physicist to know about Einstein? It’s time the world knew about and recognised the impact this man has had on our day-to-day life, and gave him the credit he deserves.

Berners-Lee went to Oxford University where he studied physics. He invented the Web whilst working at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research, that you may have heard of in the media lately for the particle accelerator they are working on). His first proposal for the web was released in March 1989, and despite not being an immediate success, its popularity exploded when the scientific and education sectors got hold of it. The proposal outlined a set of rules for technologies such as HTTP (you may have seen this at the start of all website addresses) and FTP – the technology used to send websites to the Internet. Announced as free to all, the web blossomed and continues to grow at an astounding rate.

Currently 54, Berners-Lee is the head of a company called the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The W3C create standards for the World Wide Web, a sort of rulebook on how the web should be developed. Web designers and developers follow these rules as best they can to ensure the evolution of the Internet is smooth and consistent. Websites like Google, eBay and Amazon all follow these rules today.

With some of the worlds largest businesses now being purely web based, and almost the entire UK population expected to have an Internet connection by 2015, it astounds me that Tim Berners-Lee is not yet a household name.

So the next time you sit in front of a computer and type a search into Google, send an email or visit any website in fact, you now know of the man who made that possible.

Welcome to our new website!

We decided we needed a change, and its been a long time coming!

Having been formed as netsells for around a year now, this is the first chance we have had to do any work for ourselves! We have completed almost 100 websites since we started last April, as well as around 30 branding projects!

We hope you like the new site, and if you have any comments just get in touch!