The Inventor Of The Internet

Wazdakka

This just of kind of hit me yesterday..
I realised that I had absolutely no Idea who invented the internet.

After a bit of reading stuff it looks like no one person is solely responsible.
There was a group working for DARPA back in the 60's who probably started the ball rolling, and a few monumental milestones developed in communication protocol by various people since.

But probably the one person who can be credited for the world wide web as we know it now is Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee

This guy has to be the single most unappreciated man alive.
I mean.. Sweet Jesus Titty Fúcking Christ..
He invented THE INTERNET!!

He should be richer than Bill gates, and have had more women than Hugh Hefner, James Bond, and Russel Brand put together.

Every single day for this guy should be spent knowing that he has contributed something so substantial to the world that it sometimes goes as unnoticed an taken for granted as electricity.

His life should be a whirlwind of money, beautiful women, drugs, music, expensive toys, fast cars, even more beautiful women and more money.

But alas no..
Last year he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.. and won a Webby award.

Most people don't even know his name.

Until I get around to building the Monolithical statue of appreciation that this man deserves, this thread will have to do.


Kudos sir..

petes

Arpanet.

Irish Halo

world wide web =/= internet

Also first image on the web?
http://musiclub.web.cern.ch/MusiClub/bands/cernettes/pictures/LHC5.jpg

Rabies

If the cave man that invented the wheel set up patent rights he'd be fairly rich too.... but he didn't


The internet, what would be do with out it.

Talk to people
Buy paper back porn
Play board games.
Post letters and packages.
Search in books for answers.

Insurgent wrote: »

Arpanet.

Irish Halo wrote: »

world wide web =/= internet

Fussy feckers!!!

My name is URL

and besides, he's fairly well appreciated =p

biko

Bit more here http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/inventednet.html

_blank_

Was it not Al Gore?

mike65

The internet was invented by geeks in underground bunkers in the late 60s/early 70s, the world wide web was Tim Berners-Lee "eueka" moment.

Cookie Jar

I thought it was chuck norris!

AnonoBoy

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that Chuck Norris/Jack Bauer/Vin Diesel/Rick Astley/whatever internet fad star you're having yourself had something to do with it.

AnonoBoy

Cookie Jar wrote: »

I thought it was chuck norris!

See? What did I tells ya?

Nerin

Hes working on open source twitter like things. Cloud was in contact with him over tweet.ie and he was feeding some tweets into the open source one as a test.
I only realised who the guy was when i went digging for who was sending my tweet.ie messages somewhere else.

El Siglo

Cookie Jar wrote: »

I thought it was chuck norris!

No you fool it was "The Leader."

golfnuts

AnonoBoy wrote: »

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that Chuck Norris/Jack Bauer/Vin Diesel/Rick Astley/whatever internet fad star you're having yourself had something to do with it.

Dont forget The Hoff !!

keefg

Wazdakka wrote: »

But alas no..
Last year he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.. and won a Webby award.

He got a Knighthood from Ol' Queenie, they're worth a few quid

emeraldstar

Wazdakka wrote: »

This guy has to be the single most unappreciated man alive.
I mean.. Sweet Jesus Titty Fúcking Christ..
He invented THE INTERNET!!

Most people don't even know his name.

You mean you don't pray for him every day? He is my god.

Rabies wrote: »

The internet, what would be do with out it.

Talk to people
Buy paper back porn
Play board games.
Post letters and packages.
Search in books for answers.

I am so frickin glad that the internet was invented before I started college. Imagine how awful that would have been? I saw far too much of the library as it was.


Tim Berners Lee, I salute you, my man.

rossie1977

the internet and the www are not the same thing, berners lee and cern did create the www around 1990 or thereabouts but the internet and things like email were around since the late 60s early 70s, the internet was created by the us military scientists in association with a number of universities in the states

Das Kitty

Wazdakka wrote: »

Most people don't even know his name.

Most people don't know the names of any computer pioneers in fairness.

rossie1977

Das Kitty wrote: »

Most people don't know the names of any computer pioneers in fairness.

exactly, most people don't know bills gates and his buddies just bought his first OS off another company and sold it to IBM as microsoft because they didn't have one of their own :eek:

dlofnep

Created by ARPA, Tim Berners Lee created the WWW. Basically, the ability to translate IP addresses into domains (87.22.33.44 => www.boards.ie) - so people wouldn't have to remember like 5000000 different ip addresses. It made the internet feasible for wide-spread use.

petes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

komodosp

He invented THE INTERNET!!

He invented the WWW, not the Internet! There's a big difference!
And lots of people know who he is... And appreciate him / it

keefg

komodosp wrote: »

He invented the WWW, not the Internet! There's a big difference!

I think in lay mans terms it's fair to say TBL invented the internet even though that isn't technically right.

I mean, how many people do you hear say "I just booked some really cheap flights on the WWW"?


Edit: Nerds & computer geeks don't count as real people.:)

komodosp

Even lay people use email, Bittorrent, game servers, etc. Not to mention broadband, wi-fi, and all that... which TBL didn't invent!

The "Sweet Jesus Titty Fúcking Christ!" makes it sounds like he made the entire Internet and built every computer and technology on it...

Wazdakka

keefg wrote: »

I think in lay mans terms it's fair to say TBL invented the internet even though that isn't technically right.

I mean, how many people do you hear say "I just booked some really cheap flights on the WWW"?


Edit: Nerds & computer geeks don't count as real people.:)

+1

But if it'll make everybody feel better I also extend thanks and kudos to everybody involved in the DARPA project

smileyxx

WE LOVE YOU TIMOTHY!

drunkymonkey

I heard a rumour that it was two stoners wanting to exchange their p0rn to each other on their computers! :rolleyes:

Cookie_Monster

Des wrote: »

Was it not Al Gore?

No, he invented the moon

IvySlayer

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

No, he invented the moon

Always thought he was a bit of a lunar-tic.

--Kaiser--

Wazdakka wrote: »

This guy has to be the single most unappreciated man alive.
I mean.. Sweet Jesus Titty Fúcking Christ..
He invented THE INTERNET!!

No, as people have said already, all he did was invent hyper-linked web pages which is a fairly nifty idea, but if he hadn't, someone else would have, it's not on par with the internal combustion engine or the microprocessor.

ARPA Net spent decades and billions of dollars inventing and developing 'the internet', so if you have anyone to thank, it should be the US military.

WillieCocker

lol

Wazdakka

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

No, as people have said already, all he did was invent...

So why post it again?

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

but if he hadn't, someone else would have,

Daftest statement ever.. You could try nail that on any invention I suppose.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

It's not on par with the internal combustion engine or the microprocessor.

I Disagree.

--Kaiser-- wrote: »

ARPA Net spends decades and billions of dollars inventing and developing 'the internet', so if you have anyone to thank, it should be the US military.

I already mentioned them. Both in the original post and since..

Anyway.. It's hard to make a thread thanking every code monkey who in any way contributed to the largest open source entity on the planet.

Every organisation needs a face, every band a frontman.
And for me ..
The Intertoobz frontman is Timothy.

Pygmalion

dlofnep wrote: »

Created by ARPA, Tim Berners Lee created the WWW. Basically, the ability to translate IP addresses into domains (87.22.33.44 => www.boards.ie) - so people wouldn't have to remember like 5000000 different ip addresses. It made the internet feasible for wide-spread use.

That's DNS, not WWW, it was possible to do this several years before the WWW existed AFAIK.

Tim Berners-Lee created the first HTTP server and web browser.

rossie1977

keefg wrote: »

I think in lay mans terms it's fair to say TBL invented the internet even though that isn't technically right.

I mean, how many people do you hear say "I just booked some really cheap flights on the WWW"?

no because he didn't invent the internet, the internet was around for nearly 30 years before TBL created the WWW, lets just say ed sullivan created the television just for the hell of it :pac:

genericguy

Rabies wrote: »

If the cave man that invented the wheel set up patent rights he'd be fairly rich too.... but he didn't


The internet, what would be do with out it.

Talk to people
Buy paper back porn
Play board games.
Post letters and packages.
Search in books for answers.

paper back porn sounds absolutely mental to me.

--Kaiser--

Wazdakka wrote: »

Daftest statement ever.. You could try nail that on any invention I suppose.

You're statement that Tim Berners-Lee 'invented' the Internet was far dafter.

I think my point still stands, it wasn't a huge innovation and it didn't take a huge leap of imagination or intellect

Cookie_Monster

Rabies wrote: »

Buy paper back porn

Buy Porn?
Don't think that'd catch on

McArmalite

Wazdakka wrote: »

But probably the one person who can be credited for the world wide web as we know it now is Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee

This guy has to be the single most unappreciated man alive.
I mean.. Sweet Jesus Titty Fúcking Christ..
He invented THE INTERNET!!

According to the wiki link you provided about Timothy Berners-Lee he also invented with a Belgian geek called Robert Cailliau " On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cailliau

A bit off topic, but the fellow who invented the mouse, Douglas Engelbart while doing projects with the Stanford Research Institute never bothered to patent it :eek:. During an interview he gave the reason why he did not patent it " Stanford Research Institute patented the mouse, but they really had no idea of its value. Some years later it was learned that they had licensed it to Apple for something like $40,000."

Just think of the dosh he could have made from that if he copy righted it for himself :eek:

rossie1977

McArmalite wrote: »

Just think of the dosh he could have made from that if he copy righted it for himself :eek:

lots of people don't patent things though, the woman that created the "welcome to las vegas" sign is a great example, that symbol has been used everywhere over the years and its image could have made her a billionaire if only she copyrighted it http://z.about.com/d/gosw/1/0/O/6/1vegas.jpg

kierank01

nobody seems to have mentioned Vint Cerf, who is often called 'the father of the internet'

geeky

Read an interview with him not too long ago. Came across as a very nice, unassuming man. As previous posters have said, he didn't invent the internet, but www was a huge leap, and the decision to give it away free changed the world.

He's not Bill Gates rich, but he'll never want for a well-paid job doing what he likes. He deserves that, and a lot of kudos!

sink

FYI TCP/IP is the protocol suite of the internet. It's robust packet switching design which is independent of hardware specifications made a global interconnected commercial network feasible and it was invented by two men, Robert E. Kahn and Vint Cerf while working for ARPA. If you are going to credit anyone with the invention of the internet it is these two men.