When computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee sent a memo detailing his idea of a "distributed hypertext system" on March 12, 1989, it was largely ignored by his colleagues at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This is not surprising: CERN is a place where scientists build huge colliders, not a think tank for computer geeks. Why should they care about one man's curious idea to create an interlinked web of information?
The answer was that he was trying to make their lives easier. Several thousand scientists worked at CERN at the time, but information about their projects sat in silos. Linking them together through one extended network of computers seems obvious now, but it took 18 months before Berners-Lee was granted permission to dedicate time to his idea.
