[EMBARGO] News Release: Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, Knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

*** EMBARGOED until 12:30 p.m. London time, 16 July 2004 ***

Today, Queen Elizabeth II dubbed Tim Berners-Lee a Knight Commander 
of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) during an Investiture at 
Buckingham Palace in London. UK Honours are available to all who give 
service to the United Kingdom. Sir Timothy, a British citizen who 
lives in the United States and is Director of W3C, was knighted in 
recognition of his services to the global development of the Internet 
through his invention of the World Wide Web.

For more information, please contact Karen Myers, W3C Media Relations 
Manager, at +1.617.253.5884 or +1.978.502.6218 (w3t-pr@w3.org) or 
contact the W3C Communications representative in your region, listed 
at the bottom of this email.

===============================================================

Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web, Knighted by Her 
Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) honored at Buckingham 
Palace for services to global development of the Internet

Web Resources:

This press release:
    In English: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/timbl_knighted.html.en
    In French: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/timbl_knighted.html.fr
    In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/timbl_knighted.html.ja

Congratulations to Sir Timothy
    http://www.w3.org/2004/07/timbl_congratulations

http://www.w3.org/ -- 16 July 2004 -- Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor 
of the World Wide Web and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C) was dubbed a Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire 
(KBE) by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II during an Investiture in 
London on Friday, 16 July 2004. The rank of Knight Commander is the 
second most senior rank of the Order of the British Empire, one of 
the Orders of Chivalry.

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, KBE, 49, a British citizen who lives in the 
United States, was knighted in recognition for his "services to the 
global development of the Internet" through his invention of the 
World Wide Web, a system to organize, link, and browse Internet pages.

He coined the name "World Wide Web," wrote the first World Wide Web 
server, "httpd," and the first client program (a browser and editor), 
"WorldWideWeb," in October 1990. He wrote the first version of the 
document formatting language with the capability for hypertext links, 
known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language). His initial specifications 
for URIs, HTTP, and HTML were refined and discussed in larger circles 
as Web technology spread.

During the hour-long ceremony held in the Ballroom at Buckingham 
Palace, Queen Elizabeth dubbed Sir Timothy Berners-Lee Knight 
Commander, using the sword that belonged to her father, King George 
VI. He was previously honored in 2002 at Buckingham Palace by Prince 
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who awarded him the Albert Medal of the 
Royal Society of the Arts.

"I am humbled by this great honor," stated Sir Timothy. "The Web came 
about through an ongoing collaboration with my fellow inventors and 
developers worldwide. Everyone in the Internet community should be 
recognized by this honor."

He continued, "The Web must remain a universal medium, open to all 
and not biasing the information it conveys. As the technology becomes 
ever more powerful and available, using more kinds of devices, I hope 
we learn how to use it as a medium for working together, and 
resolving misunderstandings on every scale."

Sir Timothy's commitment to universal access and open standards for 
the Web was a driving force behind his founding of the World Wide Web 
Consortium (W3C) in 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
(MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS), together with support 
from the late Michael Dertouzos, then LCS director.

Today, the W3C is known as the international organization that 
establishes technical standards for Web infrastructure and 
applications. W3C is nearly 400 Member organizations worldwide with 
technical teams at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 
Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in 
the US, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and 
Mathematics (ERCIM) in France, and Keio University in Japan.

The goal of W3C and its Members is to lead the Web to its full 
potential by developing standard technologies (specifications, 
guidelines, software and tools) that will create a forum for 
information, commerce, inspiration, independent thought and 
collective understanding.

While working in 1980 as a consultant software engineer at CERN, the 
European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, Sir 
Timothy wrote his own private program for storing information using 
the kind of random associations the brain makes. The "Enquire" 
program, which was never published, formed the conceptual basis for 
his future development of the Web.

Subsequently he proposed a global hypertext project at CERN in 1989, 
and by December 1990, the program "WorldWideWeb" became the first 
successful demonstration of Web clients and servers working over the 
Internet. All of his code was made available free on the Internet at 
large in the summer of 1991.

A London native, Sir Timothy graduated with a degree in physics from 
Queen's College at Oxford University, England in 1976. While there he 
built his first computer with a soldering iron, TTL gates, an M6800 
processor and an old television. He has since been awarded several 
honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including his 
alma mater in 2001. At MIT, he is the holder of the 3Com Founders 
Chair, and holds the position of Senior Research Scientist at CSAIL.

Cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest minds of the 
twentieth century, Sir Timothy is a Distinguished Fellow of the 
British Computer Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of 
Electrical Engineers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, was named a 
Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, and received the Japan Prize in 
2002.

In June 2004, Sir Timothy received the inaugural Millennium 
Technology Prize in Helsinki, Finland. The honor is bestowed by the 
Finnish Technology Award Foundation as an international 
acknowledgement for "an outstanding innovation that directly promotes 
people's quality of life, is based on humane values, and encourages 
sustainable economic development." In choosing Sir Timothy, the 
Finnish prize committee acknowledged the importance of his decision 
not to commercialize or patent the technologies he developed.

Sir Timothy authored the book "Weaving The Web" (HarperCollins, 1999) 
which describes the Web's birth and evolution.

About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by 
developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly 
run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence 
Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium 
for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and 
Keio University in Japan. Services provided by the Consortium 
include: a repository of information about the World Wide Web for 
developers and users, and various prototype and sample applications 
to demonstrate use of new technology. To date, nearly 400 
organizations are Members of the Consortium. For more information see 
http://www.w3.org/

Contact America --
    Karen Myers, <w3t-pr@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.978.502.6218
Contact Europe --
    Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
    Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

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Received on Friday, 16 July 2004 03:31:12 UTC