World Wide Web turns 15

Exactly 15 years ago AOL was one year old, born out of AppleLink, one of many commercial services that became available on the increasingly popular Internet. Email had been invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, UseNet newsgroup in 1979 by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis.

But it was Tim Berners-Lee who came up with the final idea that made the Internet into what it is now for most of us: the World Wide Web. Tim proposed the idea (and the name) on November 12th, 1990 and wrote the first web page the next day, on a NeXT workstation. Over Christmas he built all the necessary tools such as a web browser, an editor, and a web server. He also developed an address system known as the Uniform Resource Locator, URL.

Tim never became a billionaire or even a millionaire like many dot com entrepreneurs after him; but he did become Sir Tim as a reward for his brilliant and visionary work.