This month it is 24 years since the world wide web began and nearly a quarter of a century later it seems to be one of the inventions us Brits are most proud of. Read on to find out which other of the nation’s inventions we feel particularly proud of ...
Eight in Ten Brits are most proud of Tim Berners-Lee for creating the Internet
Recent Plusnet research reveals that of this great nation’s inventions Brits feel particularly proud of the following:
- The telephone (83%)
- The steam engine (82%)
- The internet (81%)
- The radar (78%)
- The toilet (71%)
Looking at the internet specifically (come on, we’re Plusnet after all), it was interesting to see that it’s the slightly older generations who are the proudest of this invention, with those over the age for 45 scoring it 83%, compared to only 77% of 25-34 year olds. When Plusnet started out in 1997, we offered dial-up internet boasting typical speeds of just 28.8 kbps. Some 16 years later, we’ve launched Plusnet Unlimited Fibre, a superfast broadband offering customers speeds of up to 76 Mb/s – over two and half thousand times faster. It's fair to say that we've come quite a long way since then!
And the man that made it all happen...
- Tim Berners-Lee was Born 8th June 1955
- He studied physics at Oxford before pursuing a career in software engineering
- In 1980, whilst working for CERN in Geneva, he first described his vision for a globally connected computer system based on the concept of 'hypertext”' and built a prototype called 'enquire'.
- In 1989 he published a paper called 'Information Management: A Proposal' in which he married up hypertext with the Internet, to create a system for sharing and distributing information not just within a company, but globally. He named it the World Wide Web.
- A full copy of the original proposal can be viewed here, believe it or not this is technically the world’s first website! Note his manager's comment at the top of the paper - "Vague but exciting".
Do you remember the first time you used the internet, what was it like and what did you do? Let us know by leaving a comment below (keep it clean!) ...