The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web. Hypertext is a multi-linear set of objects, building a network by using logical links (the so called hyperlinks) between the nodes (e.g. text or words). HTTP is the protocol to exchange or transfer hypertext.

The standards development of HTTP was coordinated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), culminating in the publication of a series of Requests for Comments (RFCs), most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.

Technical overview[link]

HTTP functions as a request-response protocol in the client-server computing model. In HTTP, a web browser, for example, acts as a ''client'', while an application running on a computer hosting a web site functions as a ''server''. The client submits an HTTP ''request'' message to the server. The server, which stores content, or provides ''resources'', such as HTML files, or performs other functions on behalf of the client, returns a response message to the client. A response contains completion status information about the request and may contain any content requested by the client in its message body.

A web browser (or client) is often referred to as a ''user agent'' (UA). Other user agents can include the indexing software used by search providers, known as web crawlers, or variations of the web browser such as voice browsers, which present an interactive voice user interface.

HTTP is designed to permit intermediate network elements to improve or enable communications between clients and servers. High-traffic websites often benefit from web cache servers that deliver content on behalf of the original, so-called ''origin server'', to improve response time. HTTP proxy servers at network boundaries facilitate communication when clients without a globally routable address are located in private networks by relaying the requests and responses between clients and servers.

HTTP is an Application Layer protocol designed within the framework of the Internet Protocol Suite. The protocol definitions presume a reliable Transport Layer protocol for host-to-host data transfer. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the dominant protocol in use for this purpose. However, HTTP has found application even with unreliable protocols, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) in methods such as the Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP).

HTTP Resources are identified and located on the network by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs)—or, more specifically, Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)—using the http or https URI schemes. URIs and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), form a system of inter-linked resources, called hypertext documents, on the Internet, that led to the establishment of the World Wide Web in 1990 by English computer scientist and innovator Tim Berners-Lee.

The original version of HTTP (HTTP/1.0) was revised in HTTP/1.1. HTTP/1.0 uses a separate connection to the same server for every request-response transaction, while HTTP/1.1 can reuse a connection multiple times, to download, for instance, images for a just delivered page. Hence HTTP/1.1 communications experience less latency as the establishment of TCP connections presents considerable overhead.

History[link]

The term HyperText was coined by Ted Nelson who in turn was inspired by Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex". Tim Berners-Lee first proposed the "WorldWideWeb" project — now known as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee and his team are credited with inventing the original HTTP along with HTML and the associated technology for a web server and a text-based web browser. The first version of the protocol had only one method, namely GET, which would request a page from a server. The response from the server was always an HTML page.

The first documented version of HTTP was HTTP V0.9 (1991). Dave Raggett led the HTTP Working Group (HTTP WG) in 1995 and wanted to expand the protocol with extended operations, extended negotiation, richer meta-information, tied with a security protocol which became more efficient by adding additional methods and header fields. RFC 1945 officially introduced and recognized HTTP V1.0 in 1996.

The HTTP WG planned to publish new standards in December 1995 and the support for pre-standard HTTP/1.1 based on the then developing RFC 2068 (called HTTP-NG) was rapidly adopted by the major browser developers in early 1996. By March 1996, pre-standard HTTP/1.1 was supported in Arena, Netscape 2.0, Netscape Navigator Gold 2.01, Mosaic 2.7, Lynx 2.5, and in Internet Explorer 2.0. End-user adoption of the new browsers was rapid. In March 1996, one web hosting company reported that over 40% of browsers in use on the Internet were HTTP 1.1 compliant. That same web hosting company reported that by June 1996, 65% of all browsers accessing their servers were HTTP/1.1 compliant. The HTTP/1.1 standard as defined in RFC 2068 was officially released in January 1997. Improvements and updates to the HTTP/1.1 standard were released under RFC 2616 in June 1999.

HTTP session[link]

An HTTP session is a sequence of network request-response transactions. An HTTP client initiates a request by establishing a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a particular port on a server (typically port 80; see List of TCP and UDP port numbers). An HTTP server listening on that port waits for a client's request message. Upon receiving the request, the server sends back a status line, such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK", and a message of its own. The body of this message is typically the requested resource, although an error message or other information may also be returned.

Request methods[link]

HTTP defines nine methods (sometimes referred to as "verbs") indicating the desired action to be performed on the identified resource. What this resource represents, whether pre-existing data or data that is generated dynamically, depends on the implementation of the server. Often, the resource corresponds to a file or the output of an executable residing on the server.

; HEAD: Asks for the response identical to the one that would correspond to a GET request, but without the response body. This is useful for retrieving meta-information written in response headers, without having to transport the entire content. ; GET: Requests a representation of the specified resource. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should have no other effect. (This is also true of some other HTTP methods.) The W3C has published guidance principles on this distinction, saying, "Web application design should be informed by the above principles, but also by the relevant limitations." See safe methods below. ; POST: Submits data to be processed (e.g., from an HTML form) to the identified resource. The data is included in the body of the request. This may result in the creation of a new resource or the updates of existing resources or both. ; PUT: Uploads a representation of the specified resource. ; DELETE: Deletes the specified resource. ; TRACE: Echoes back the received request, so that a client can see what (if any) changes or additions have been made by intermediate servers. ; OPTIONS: Returns the HTTP methods that the server supports for specified URL. This can be used to check the functionality of a web server by requesting '*' instead of a specific resource. ; CONNECT: Converts the request connection to a transparent TCP/IP tunnel, usually to facilitate SSL-encrypted communication (HTTPS) through an unencrypted HTTP proxy. ; PATCH: Is used to apply partial modifications to a resource.

HTTP servers are required to implement at least the GET and HEAD methods and, whenever possible, also the OPTIONS method.

Safe methods[link]

Some methods (for example, HEAD, GET, OPTIONS and TRACE) are defined as ''safe'', which means they are intended only for information retrieval and should not change the state of the server. In other words, they should not have side effects, beyond relatively harmless effects such as logging, caching, the serving of banner advertisements or incrementing a web counter. Making arbitrary GET requests without regard to the context of the application's state should therefore be considered safe.

By contrast, methods such as POST, PUT and DELETE are intended for actions that may cause side effects either on the server, or external side effects such as financial transactions or transmission of email. Such methods are therefore not usually used by conforming web robots or web crawlers; some that do not conform tend to make requests without regard to context or consequences.

Despite the prescribed safety of ''GET'' requests, in practice their handling by the server is not technically limited in any way. Therefore, careless or deliberate programming can cause non-trivial changes on the server. This is discouraged, because it can cause problems for Web caching, search engines and other automated agents, which can make unintended changes on the server.

Idempotent methods and web applications[link]

Methods PUT and DELETE are defined to be idempotent, meaning that multiple identical requests should have the same effect as a single request (Note that idempotence refers to the state of the system after the request has completed, so while the action the server takes (e.g. deleting a record) or the response code it returns may be different on subsequent requests, the system state will be the same every time.) Methods GET, HEAD, OPTIONS and TRACE, being prescribed as safe, should also be idempotent, as HTTP is a stateless protocol.

In contrast, the POST method is not necessarily idempotent, and therefore sending an identical POST request multiple times may further affect state or cause further side effects (such as financial transactions). In some cases this may be desirable, but in other cases this could be due to an accident, such as when a user does not realize that their action will result in sending another request, or they did not receive adequate feedback that their first request was successful. While web browsers may show alert dialog boxes to warn users in some cases where reloading a page may re-submit a POST request, it is generally up to the web application to handle cases where a POST request should not be submitted more than once.

Note that whether a method is idempotent is not enforced by the protocol or web server. It is perfectly possible to write a web application in which (for example) a database insert or other non-idempotent action is triggered by a GET or other request. Ignoring this recommendation, however, may result in undesirable consequences, if a user agent assumes that repeating the same request is safe when it isn't.

Security[link]

Implementing methods such as TRACE, TRACK and DEBUG is considered potentially insecure by some security professionals, because they can be used by attackers to gather information or bypass security controls during attacks. Security software tools such as Tenable Nessus and Microsoft URLScan report on the presence of these methods as being security issues.

Status codes[link]

In HTTP/1.0 and since, the first line of the HTTP response is called the ''status line'' and includes a numeric ''status code'' (such as "404") and a textual ''reason phrase'' (such as "Not Found"). The way the user agent handles the response primarily depends on the code and secondarily on the response headers. Custom status codes can be used since, if the user agent encounters a code it does not recognize, it can use the first digit of the code to determine the general class of the response.

Also, the standard ''reason phrases'' are only recommendations and can be replaced with "local equivalents" at the web developer's discretion. If the status code indicated a problem, the user agent might display the ''reason phrase'' to the user to provide further information about the nature of the problem. The standard also allows the user agent to attempt to interpret the ''reason phrase'', though this might be unwise since the standard explicitly specifies that status codes are machine-readable and ''reason phrases'' are human-readable.

Persistent connections[link]

In HTTP/0.9 and 1.0, the connection is closed after a single request/response pair. In HTTP/1.1 a keep-alive-mechanism was introduced, where a connection could be reused for more than one request.

Such ''persistent connections'' reduce request latency perceptibly, because the client does not need to re-negotiate the TCP connection after the first request has been sent. Another positive side effect is that in general the connection becomes faster with time due to TCP's slow-start-mechanism.

Version 1.1 of the protocol made bandwidth optimization improvements to HTTP/1.0. For example, HTTP/1.1 introduced chunked transfer encoding to allow content on persistent connections to be streamed, rather than buffered. HTTP pipelining further reduces lag time, allowing clients to send multiple requests before a previous response has been received to the first one. Another improvement to the protocol was byte serving, which is when a server transmits just the portion of a resource explicitly requested by a client.

HTTP session state[link]

HTTP is a stateless protocol. A stateless protocol does not require the server to retain information or status about each user for the duration of multiple requests. For example, when a web server is required to customize the content of a web page for a user, the web application may have to track the user's progress from page to page. A common solution is the use of HTTP cookies. Other methods include server side sessions, hidden variables (when the current page contains a form), and URL-rewriting using URI-encoded parameters, e.g., /index.php?session_id=some_unique_session_code.

Secure HTTP[link]

There are three methods of establishing a secure HTTP connection: HTTP Secure, Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol and the HTTP/1.1 Upgrade header. Browser support for the latter two is, however, nearly non-existent, so HTTP Secure is the dominant method of establishing a secure HTTP connection.

Request message[link]

The request message consists of the following:

A request line, for example GET /images/logo.png HTTP/1.1, which requests a resource called /images/logo.png from the server.

Headers, such as Accept-Language: en

An empty line.

An optional message body.

The request line and headers must all end with (that is, a carriage return followed by a line feed). The empty line must consist of only and no other whitespace. Although is required alone is also accepted by most servers. In the HTTP/1.1 protocol, all headers except Host are optional.

A request line containing only the path name is accepted by servers to maintain compatibility with HTTP clients before the HTTP/1.0 specification in RFC 1945.

Response message[link]

The response message consists of the following:

A Status-Line (for example HTTP/1.1 200 OK, which indicates that the client's request succeeded)

Headers, such as Content-Type: text/html

An empty line

An optional message body

The Status-Line and headers must all end with CR+LF (a carriage return followed by a line feed). The empty line must consist of only CR+LF and no other whitespace.

Example session[link]

Below is a sample conversation between an HTTP client and an HTTP server running on www.example.com, port 80.

Client request[link]

 GET /index.html HTTP/1.1␍␊
 Host: www.example.com␍␊
 ␍␊

A client request (consisting in this case of the request line and only one header) is followed by a blank line, so that the request ends with a double newline, each in the form of a carriage return followed by a line feed. The "Host" header distinguishes between various DNS names sharing a single IP address, allowing name-based virtual hosting. While optional in HTTP/1.0, it is mandatory in HTTP/1.1.

Server response[link]

 HTTP/1.1 200 OK
 Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:38:34 GMT
 Server: Apache/1.3.3.7 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux)
 Last-Modified: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 23:11:55 GMT
 Etag: "3f80f-1b6-3e1cb03b"
 Accept-Ranges:  none
 Content-Length: 438
 Connection: close
 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

The ETag (entity tag) header is used to determine if a cached version of the requested resource is identical to the current version of the resource on the server. ''Content-Type'' specifies the Internet media type of the data conveyed by the HTTP message, while ''Content-Length'' indicates its length in bytes. The HTTP/1.1 webserver publishes its ability to respond to requests for certain byte ranges of the document by setting the header ''Accept-Ranges: bytes''. This is useful, if the client needs to have only certain portions of a resource sent by the server, which is called byte serving. When ''Connection: close'' is sent in a header, it means that the web server will close the TCP connection immediately after the transfer of this response.

Most of the header lines are optional. When ''Content-Length'' is missing the length is determined in other ways. Chunked transfer encoding uses a chunk size of 0 to mark the end of the content. ''Identity'' encoding without ''Content-Length'' reads content until the socket is closed.

A ''Content-Encoding'' like ''gzip'' can be used to compress the transmitted data.

See also[link]

HTTP replacements or enhancements[link]

Representational State Transfer (REST)

SPDY - A HTTP enhancement proposed by Google

Waka (protocol) - A HTTP replacement proposed by Roy Fielding

HTTP-MPLEX - A backwards compatible enhancement to HTTP to improve page and web object retrieval time in congested networks proposed by Robert Mattson

HTTP 2.0 - currently being worked on by the IETF's Hypertext Transfer Protocol Bis (httpbis) working group.

Further Information[link]

Basic access authentication

Content negotiation

HTTP compression

Hxxp

Related topics and technologies[link]

Curl-loader - HTTP/S loading/testing open-source SW

Digest access authentication

List of file transfer protocols

List of HTTP headers

List of HTTP status codes

Web cache

WebDAV

References[link]

Further reading[link]

HTTP 0.9 - As Implemented in 1991

External links[link]

A detailed technical history of HTTP. Design Issues by Berners-Lee when he was designing the protocol. list of other classic documents recounting the early protocol history

Category:Application layer protocols Category:Open formats Category:Web browsers Category:World Wide Web Category:World Wide Web Consortium standards Category:Article Feedback 5 Additional Articles

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name	Taraka Rama Rao Nandamuri, Jr.
birth date	May 20, 1983
birth place	Hyderabad, India
birth name	Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao
parents	Harikrishna NandamuriShalini Nandamuri
othername	Jr. NTR, Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao Jr., Tarak
occupation	Actor and Playback Singer
residence	Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
spouse	Lakshmi Pranathi
relatives	Taraka Rama Rao Nandamuri (paternal grandfather) Balakrishna Nandamuri (paternal uncle) Kalyan Ram Nandamuri (half-brother)Taraka Ratna Nandamuri (paternal cousin)Purandhareswari Daggubati (paternal aunt)Chandrababu Naidu Nara (paternal uncle and in-law)
yearsactive	1991 to present }}

Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao (born 20 May 1983), known popularly as Jr. NTR, is an Indian film actor in Telugu Cinema and an accomplished Kuchipudi dancer. Tarak made his Telugu film debut as a child actor with ''Brahmarshi Viswamitra'' (1991) and ''Ramayanam'' (1997), which won the National Film Award for Best Children's Film in 1998.

Five years later he starred in a lead role with ''Ninnu Chudalani'' (2001). His notable filmography includes ''Student No. 1'', ''Aadi'', ''Simhadri'', ''Yamadonga'' which were hits and have established himself as one of the leading actors in contemporary Telugu cinema.

Personal life[link]

Tarak is the grandson of yesteryear's Telugu film super star turned politician Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao. He was born to politician and actor Nandamuri Harikrishna and Shalini. Actor Nandamuri Balakrishna is Tarak's uncle. Tarak attended his schooling at Vignan vidyalayam, and Intermediate at St. Mary's College, Yousufguda, Hyderabad.

Tarak was trained in Kuchipudi, under Master Sudhakar and has performed dance stage shows at several auditoriums in Andhra Pradesh. Tarak was engaged to Lakshmi Pranathi, who is the daughter of Narne Mallika, the niece of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandra Babu Naidu. on 1 April 2010. The couple got married on 5 May 2011 in a private ceremony held at Hyderabad International Convention Center.

Endorsements[link]

Tarak is the Brand Ambassdor for Malabar Gold, Navratna, and Zandu Balm in Andhra Pradesh.

Career in Telugu cinema[link]

He began his career as a child artist. His first movie he starred in was ''Brahmarshi Viswamithra'' directed by N. T. R. But his full length major role was in the movie ''Bala Ramayanam'' directed by Guna Shekar. Tarak made his re-entry into the Tollywood with Ninnu Choodalani in 2001; but it failed to perform well at the box office. He mentioned in an interview that his remuneration for "Ninnu Choodalani" was about 6 lakh Rupees.

However in the same year he went on to gain fame with ''Student No. 1'' directed by S.S. Rajamouli, followed by soft love story ''Subbu'' and ''Aadi'', which was a blockbuster, and brought immediate stardom for him. In year 2003, he came up with a political movie Naaga. Even though the movie raised some political issues worth giving a thought, it settled as an average grosser. However his next movie ''Simhadri'' went on to become a blockbuster. In 2004, his career took a down turn with ''Andhrawala''. Though ''Samba'' fared as above average grosser his next movies ''Naa Alludu'' and ''Narasimhudu'' released in year 2005 did badly at box office. In 2006, his film ''Ashok'' had the biggest opening week gross in his career but did not appease his fans.

His next movie ''Rakhi'' directed by Pasupuleti Krishna Vamsi, which proved an average grosser at the box office, gained him admirable reviews from fans and critics alike. His next movie, Yamadonga, which was inspired by his grandfather's blockbuster Yamagola, released in August 2007 brought him back into the super-hit stream, and became the sensational movie of the year. Tarak's next film was ''Kantri'', released in May 2008 exposed his superb skill of dancing but did badly at box office. In year 2010 he appeared in two movies, and both of them ''Adhurs'' in which he played a dual role and ''Brindavanam'' succeeded well at box-office. ''Shakthi'' released on 1 April 2011 and it failed to perform well at the box office.

Tarak played the lead role in the film ''Oosaravelli'', directed by Surender Reddy, which was released on 6 October 2011 and though it received mixed reviews, it failed at the box office.Another movie titled ''Dammu'' under the direction of Boyapati Seenu was launched on 18 February 2011.

Political stint and accident[link]

Tarak was one of the campaigners for the Telugu Desam Party, for the Indian general election, 2009 from April to May 2009. On March 26, 2009, After electioneering, en route to Hyderabad, the SUV in which he was a passenger was struck head-on with another vehicle, at Khammam. He and his companions were thrown from the SUV and suffered brutal injuries, Tarak, was treated at Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, in Secunderabad to recuperate.

Filmography[link]

As actor[link]

Title ''Brahmarshi Viswamitra'' ''Ramayanam (1997 film) ''Ninnu Chudalani'' ''Student No.1'' ''Subbu'' ''Aadi (film) ''Allari Ramudu'' ''Naaga'' ''Simhadri (film) ''Andhrawala'' ''Samba (film) ''Naa Alludu'' ''Narasimhudu'' ''Ashok (film) ''Rakhi (2006 film) ''Yamadonga'' ''Kanthri'' ''Chintakayala Ravi'' ''Adhurs'' ''Brindaavanam'' ''Shakti (2010 film) ''Oosaravelli'' ''Dammu'' ''Baadshah (2012 film)

Year	|	Role	Notes
1991	|
1997	Ramayanam'' ||	Lord Rama
2001	|	Venu
2001	|	Aadithya
2002	|	Subbu
2002	Aadi'' ||	Aadi Keshava Reddy	Nandi Special Jury Award
2002	|	Ramakrishna
2003	|	Naaga
2003	Simhadri'' ||	Simhadri
2004	|	Shankar PehalwanMunna	Also Producer
2004	Samba'' ||	Samba Shiva Naidu
2005	|	KarthikMurugan
2005	|	Kondaveeti Narasimhudu
2006	Ashok'' ||	Ashok
2006	Rakhi'' ||	Ramakrishna
2007	|	Raja	Filmfare Award for Best Telugu Actor
2008	|	Kranthi	Nominated, Filmfare Award for Best Telugu Actor
2008	|		Special appearance
2010	|	NarasimhaNarasimhachari	Nominated, Filmfare Award for Best Telugu Actor
2010	|	Krishna (Krish)	Nominated, Filmfare Award for Best Telugu Actor
2011	Shakti'' ||	ShaktiRudra
2011	|	Tony
2012	|	Raja vasi Reddy
2012	Baadshah'' ||		Pre-Production

As singer[link]

Year	Song
2007	"Olammi Tikkareginda"
2008	"123 Nenoka Kantri"
2010	"Chary"

References[link]

External links[link]

JrNTR.com

Category:1983 births Jr. NTR Category:Telugu people Category:Living people Category:Telugu actors Category:Filmfare Awards South winners

pl:Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao sa:जूनियर् एन् टि आर् te:ఎన్.టి.ఆర్. (తారక్)

name	Sir Tim Berners-Lee
honorific suffix	OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA
birth name	Timothy John Berners-Lee
birth date	June 08, 1955
birth place	London, England
nationality	English
residence	Massachusetts, U.S.
known for
alma mater	Queen's College, Oxford
employer
occupation	Computer scientist
title	Professor
religion	Unitarian Universalism
parents
website	}}

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, (born 8 June 1955), also known as "TimBL", is an English computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989 and on 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet.

Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is a director of The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work. In April 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences, based in Washington, D.C.

Early life[link]

Tim Berners-Lee was born in southwest London, England, on 8 June 1955, the son of Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods. His parents worked on the first commercially built computer, the Ferranti Mark 1. One of four children, he attended Sheen Mount Primary School, and then went on to Emanuel School in London, from 1969 to 1973. He studied at The Queen's College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, where he received a first-class degree in Physics.

Career[link]

While an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. While there, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE.

After leaving CERN in 1980, he went to work at John Poole's Image Computer Systems, Ltd, in Bournemouth, England. The project he worked on was a ''real-time remote procedure call'' which gave him experience in computer networking. In 1984 he returned to CERN as a fellow.

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: "I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web." “Creating the web was really an act of desperation, because the situation without it was very difficult when I was working at CERN later. Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already. I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system.” He wrote his initial proposal in March 1989, and in 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau (with whom he shared the 1995 ACM Software System Award), produced a revision which was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall. He used similar ideas to those underlying the ENQUIRE system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first Web browser. This also functioned as an editor (WorldWideWeb, running on the NeXTSTEP operating system), and the first Web server, CERN HTTPd (short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon).

The first web site built was at CERN within the border of France, and was first put online on 6 August 1991:

"Info.cern.ch was the address of the world's first-ever web site and web server, running on a NeXT computer at CERN. The first web page address was http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html, which centred on information regarding the WWW project. Visitors could learn more about hypertext, technical details for creating their own webpage, and even an explanation on how to search the Web for information. There are no screenshots of this original page and, in any case, changes were made daily to the information available on the page as the WWW project developed. You may find a later copy (1992) on the World Wide Web Consortium website." -CERN

It provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how one could use a browser and set up a web server.

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at MIT. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. The World Wide Web Consortium decided that its standards should be based on royalty-free technology, so that they could easily be adopted by anyone.

In 2001, Berners-Lee became a patron of the East Dorset Heritage Trust, having previously lived in Colehill in Wimborne, East Dorset, England.

In December 2004, he accepted a chair in Computer Science at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, England, to work on his new project, the Semantic Web.

Current work [link]

In June 2009 then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Berners-Lee would work with the UK Government to help make data more open and accessible on the Web, building on the work of the Power of Information Task Force. Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt are the two key figures behind data.gov.uk, a UK Government project to open up almost all data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. Commenting on the opening up of Ordnance Survey data in April 2010 Berners-Lee said that: "The changes signal a wider cultural change in Government based on an assumption that information should be in the public domain unless there is a good reason not to—not the other way around." He went on to say "Greater openness, accountability and transparency in Government will give people greater choice and make it easier for individuals to get more directly involved in issues that matter to them."

In November 2009, Berners-Lee launched the World Wide Web Foundation in order to "Advance the Web to empower humanity by launching transformative programs that build local capacity to leverage the Web as a medium for positive change."

Berners-Lee is one of the pioneer voices in favour of Net Neutrality, and has expressed the view that ISPs should supply "connectivity with no strings attached," and should neither control nor monitor customers' browsing activities without their expressed consent. He advocates the idea that net neutrality is a kind of human network right: "Threats to the Internet, such as companies or governments that interfere with or snoop on Internet traffic, compromise basic human network rights."

In a ''Times'' article in October 2009, Berners-Lee admitted that the initial pair of slashes ("//") in a web address were actually "unnecessary". He told the newspaper that he could easily have designed URLs not to have the slashes. "There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said in his lighthearted apology.

Recognition[link]

In 1994 he became one of only six members of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. In 1995 he won the Kilby Foundation's "Young Innovator of the Year" Award. In 1995 he received also the Software System Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). In 1998 he was awarded with an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex. In 1999, ''Time Magazine'' named Berners-Lee one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. In March 2000 he was awarded an honorary degree from The Open University as Doctor of the University. In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2003, he received the Computer History Museum's Fellow Award, for his seminal contributions to the development of the World Wide Web. On 15 April 2004, he was named as the first recipient of Finland's Millennium Technology Prize, for inventing the World Wide Web. The cash prize, worth one million euros (about £892,000, or US$1.3 million, as of Sept 2011), was awarded on 15 June, in Helsinki, Finland, by the President of the Republic of Finland, Tarja Halonen. He was appointed to the rank of Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (the second-highest class within this Order that entails a knighthood) by Queen Elizabeth II, in the 2004 New Year's Honours List, and was formally invested on 16 July 2004. On 21 July 2004, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Lancaster University. On 27 January 2005, he was named Greatest Briton of 2004, both for his achievements and for displaying the key British characteristics of "diffidence, determination, a sharp sense of humour and adaptability", as put by David Hempleman-Adams, a panel member.

In 2007, Berners-Lee received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.

In 2007, he was ranked Joint First, alongside Albert Hofmann, in ''The Telegraph'''s list of 100 greatest living geniuses. On 13 June 2007, he received the Order of Merit, becoming one of only 24 living members entitled to hold the honour, and to use the post-nominals 'O.M.' after their name. (The Order of Merit is within the personal bestowal of The Queen, and does not require recommendation by ministers or the Prime Minister) He was awarded the 2008 IEEE/RSE Wolfson James Clerk Maxwell Award, for "conceiving and further developing the World Wide Web". On 2 December 2008, Berners-Lee was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester. His parents worked on the Manchester Mark 1 in the 1940s and 50s. On 21 April 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

On 28 April 2009, he was elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

On 8 June 2009, he received the Webby Award for Lifetime Achievement, at the awards ceremony held in New York City. In October 2009, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

On 30 March 2011, he was one of the first three recipients of the Mikhail Gorbachev award for "The Man Who Changed the World", at the inuagural awards ceremony held in London. The other recipients were Evans Wadongo for solar power development and anti-poverty work in Africa, and media mogul Ted Turner.

On 26 May 2011, Berners-Lee was awarded with an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Harvard University. In 2011, he was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI's Hall of Fame for the "significant contributions to the field of AI and intelligent systems". In 2012, Berners-Lee was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.

Personal life[link]

Berners-Lee had a religious upbringing, but left the Church of England as a teenager, just after being confirmed and "told how essential it was to believe in all kinds of unbelievable things". He and his family eventually joined a Unitarian Universalist church while they were living in Boston.

See also [link]

Eelco van Asperen

History of the World Wide Web

Kevin Hughes (www)

libwww

Mundaneum

Network neutrality

Paul Otlet

Semantic Web

Bob Taylor

Vannevar Bush

Publications[link]

Notes[link]

Further reading [link]

''Tim Berners-Lee and the Development of the World Wide Web (Unlocking the Secrets of Science)'', Ann Gaines (Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2001) ISBN 1-58415-096-3

''Tim Berners-Lee: Inventor of the World Wide Web (Ferguson's Career Biographies)'', Melissa Stewart (Ferguson Publishing Company, 2001) ISBN 0-89434-367-X children's biography

''Weaving the Web'' Berners-Lee, Tim, with Fischetti, Mark (Harper Collins Publishers,1999) ISBN 0-06-251586-1(cloth) ISBN 0-06-251587-X(paper)

''How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web'' Robert Cailliau, James Gillies, R. Cailliau (Oxford University Press, 2000) ISBN 0-19-286207-3

Tim Berners-Lee Gives the Web a New Definition

BBC2 Newsnight – Transcript of video interview of Berners-Lee on the read/write Web

Technology Review interview

External links [link]

timbl on identi.ca

Tim Berners-Lee on the W3C site

First World Wide Web page

Category:Free software people Category:1955 births Category:Alumni of The Queen's College, Oxford Category:English computer scientists Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English inventors Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Fellows of the British Computer Society Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Category:Internet pioneers Category:Internet Hall of Fame inductees Category:Living people Category:Japan Prize laureates Category:Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:MacArthur Fellows Category:Members of the Order of Merit Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:People from London Category:People from Barnes, London Category:World Wide Web Consortium Category:Computer pioneers Category:Royal Medal winners Category:English Unitarians Category:HTTP Category:People educated at Emanuel School Category:Unitarian Universalists

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