Unlike a lot of the inventions that have changed the world, the creation of the World Wide Web was the work of one man. The internet was the idea of the Tim Berners-Lee. He designed it. He set it loose on the world. And more than anyone else he has fought to keep it open, and free.

It started, of all places, in the Swiss Alps. The year was 1980. Berners-Lee, was there for six months as a software engineer at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva. Always interested in organizing information in a brain-like way Tim had been thinking of a way to make this happen.

He created a relatively easy-to-learn language - HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) - that has come to be the language of the Web. HTML is the language that makes the Web work. Raised in London in the 1960s, Berners-Lee always liked Physics, and in fact his studies prepared him for the creation of the world wide web. Berners-Lee co-founded Netscape, and was one of the Internets first millionaires. He now works at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the director of the W3 Consortium which sets the standards that make the web work. His contribution has definitely changed the world.