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50 free Tim Berners-Lee trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tim Berners-Lee gave away the most valuable invention of the late twentieth century. He wrote the proposal for the World Wide Web at CERN in March 1989, built the first browser and server on a NeXT computer, published the first website in December 1990, and then persuaded CERN to release the whole thing royalty-free so anyone could use it. He has spent the decades since defending that openness, from net neutrality to his Solid project for personal data. This Tim Berners-Lee trivia quiz runs 50 questions across his life and work: his mathematician parents and the Ferranti Mark 1, the computer he built from a television at Oxford, ENQUIRE, the "vague, but exciting" note from his boss, Robert Cailliau, WorldWideWeb and CERN httpd, the founding of the W3C, the double-slash apology, the 2012 Olympics tweet, his knighthood, Order of Merit and Turing Award, the Sotheby's NFT auction and his 2025 memoir. Easy questions come first; the final third is for people who know what a Line Mode browser is. Every answer is verified against Wikipedia's articles on Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, with the supporting sentence quoted under each question. If you enjoy this quiz, try our internet history and computer science quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Tim Berners-Lee is best known as the inventor of what?
The World Wide Web
The Internet already existed; his contribution was HTML, URLs and HTTP layered on top of it.
Q 02At which research organisation was Berners-Lee working when he proposed the Web in 1989?
CERN
CERN was then the largest Internet node in Europe, which is what made joining hypertext to the network so tempting.
Q 03On what date did Berners-Lee submit his information management proposal at CERN?
12 March 1989
He redistributed it in 1990, and his manager's three-word verdict on it became famous.
Q 04How did Berners-Lee's manager Mike Sendall describe the Web proposal?
"Vague, but exciting"
The three words are now among the most quoted in computing history.
Q 05Berners-Lee was born in 1955 in which city?
London
Both his parents came from Birmingham and worked on early commercial computers.
Q 06Berners-Lee's parents both worked on which pioneering machine, the first commercially built computer?
Ferranti Mark 1
Mary Lee and Conway Berners-Lee were both mathematicians and computer scientists.
Q 07As a child Berners-Lee learnt about electronics by tinkering with what?
A model railway
He was also a keen trainspotter, which is not a coincidence.
Q 08Berners-Lee took a first-class degree in which subject at Oxford in 1976?
Physics
He was at The Queen's College, where he built his own computer from scrap.
Q 09While at Oxford, Berners-Lee made a computer out of what?
An old television set
He bought the set from a repair shop; his first job afterwards was as an engineer at Plessey in Poole.
Q 10After graduating, Berners-Lee worked at Plessey in Poole, in which English county?
Dorset
He stayed in Dorset for years, later at D. G. Nash in Ferndown and Image Computer Systems in Bournemouth.
Q 11What was the name of the hypertext prototype Berners-Lee built during his 1980 contract at CERN?
ENQUIRE
Its ideas fed directly into the Web nine years later; the name came from a Victorian how-to book, Enquire Within Upon Everything.
Q 12Berners-Lee's 1980 stint at CERN lasted how long?
Six months
He worked as an independent contractor from June to December, then went back to England before returning as a fellow in 1984.
Q 13Which Belgian engineer at CERN became Berners-Lee's partner in launching the Web?
Robert Cailliau
Cailliau helped rewrite the proposal, found funding and organised the first WWW conference in 1994.
Q 21Berners-Lee's design rejected which structure, used by CERNDOC and the Unix filesystem?
A tree
He also insisted the system be decentralised, with no central control over who could create a link.
Q 22In 1994 Berners-Lee founded the W3C at which institution?
MIT
The W3C decided its standards should be based on technology anyone could adopt without paying.
Q 23Which markup language did the W3C create in 1996, before recommending stricter XHTML replace HTML?
XML
Browser makers rejected XHTML, formed the WHATWG and built HTML5; the W3C conceded in 2009.
In 2009 Berners-Lee apologised for which "unnecessary" feature of web addresses?
Q 14Berners-Lee's first web browser, which also worked as an editor, ran on which operating system?
NeXTSTEP
He built it on a NeXT Computer, the same kind of machine he sat at during the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.
Q 15What was the name of the first web server software Berners-Lee wrote?
CERN httpd
The name stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol daemon; the browser-editor was simply called WorldWideWeb.
Q 16Berners-Lee published the first website on what date?
20 December 1990
It described the project itself and explained how to use a browser and set up a server.
Q 17On 6 August 1991 Berners-Lee posted a public invitation to collaborate on the WorldWideWeb project where?
Usenet
That post to alt.hypertext is often treated as the Web's public birthday.
Q 18On 30 April 1993 CERN made the Web protocol and code available on what terms?
Royalty-free
The University of Minnesota had just announced fees for Gopher servers, which helped the free Web win.
Q 19Which 1993 graphical browser from NCSA, able to show inline images, made the Web's popularity explode?
Mosaic
Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded Netscape the following year and released Navigator.
Q 20Whose 1965 hypertext model, with hyperlinks on "hot spots" in text, confirmed Berners-Lee's concept?
Ted Nelson
Nelson coined the word hypertext; his own Project Xanadu never shipped a usable system.
The double slash
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he told The Times.
Q 25At which university did Berners-Lee accept a computer science chair in 2004?
Southampton
He later co-founded data.gov.uk and the Open Data Institute with a Southampton colleague.
Q 26With whom did Berners-Lee create data.gov.uk and co-found the Open Data Institute?
Nigel Shadbolt
He argued government information should be public unless there was a good reason not to, not the other way round.
Q 27Berners-Lee's message during the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, spelled out in LED lights, read what?
This is for everyone
He tweeted it from a vintage NeXT computer on the stadium floor and reused it as the title of his 2025 memoir.
Q 28Berners-Lee's Solid project, giving people control of their data, is a joint effort with an institute in which country?
Qatar
In 2018 he launched a startup to build a commercial ecosystem around Solid.
Q 29What is the name of the open-source startup Berners-Lee announced in 2018 to commercialise Solid?
Inrupt
It lets users choose where their data lives and which apps may see it.
Q 30As W3C director in 2017, Berners-Lee controversially approved which DRM-related specification?
Encrypted Media Extensions
The Electronic Frontier Foundation appealed and lost; EME became a formal recommendation that September.