Subject areaProcess and organisation
Also known asTim Berners Lee
Tim Berners-Lee is the British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web.
He was working at CERN in Geneva (the European particle physics laboratory) when, in 1989, he proposed a system for sharing documents among researchers by linking texts on different computers. Between 1989 and 1991 he wrote its essential parts: the page language (HTML), addresses (URLs), the protocol pages travel on (HTTP) and the first browser.
His decisive choice was to bring hypertext onto the network and keep the Web free of patents, so anyone could build on it. He then founded the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the body that sets Web standards, and promoted the Semantic Web, where data carry their own meaning in a machine-readable form. Tools such as SKOS and the structured data search engines use today descend from that idea.
Source: Wikidata Q80 e Wikipedia, voce Tim Berners-Lee, consultati il 19/10/2026, per la data di nascita e per gli anni del Web al CERN.
An example
A manufacturing company that publishes its catalogue with structured data, so that a search engine recognises product, material and certification, is applying today the idea of the Semantic Web that Berners-Lee proposed.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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