Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the World Wide Web. The guy literally invented it. He's cool, we love him.
In the 1980s, he was a humble software contractor who managed to snag himself a job at CERN, the massive physics lab on the border between France and Switzerland. The place where they've built the Large Hadron Collider.
Physicists travelled from all over the world to use the the laboratory facilities. But they all had different types of computers and different ways of doing things. Which used to be a problem for a scientist because sharing information with colleagues is quite important in that field.
But luckily for CERN and the rest of humanity, Tim Berners-Lee had had an idea whirling around in his head for several years:
"Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked, I thought."
How did he do it?
The same way any decent, self-respecting engineer does anything: by bundling together a bunch of existing technology to make something new.
Ok, to be fair he did create all of the connecting pieces himself.
Hyperlinkage
- Tim Berners-Lee's open letter marking the Web's 35th birthday, published by the World Wide Web Foundation.
- Sir Tim's homepage at the World Wide Web Consortium including biography and publications.
- Tim Berners-Lee according to Wikipedia.