# Tim Berners-Lee on Reddit (u/timbl)

Part of Scientists on Reddit, researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-07. Interactive version: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/scientists-on-reddit/tim-berners-lee

Tim Berners-Lee: Computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web.

- Reddit account: [u/timbl](https://www.reddit.com/user/timbl/) (AMA only)
- How we know it's theirs: [The 2014 r/IAmA AMA, posted from this account](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2091d4/)
- Where they post, in the records we retrieved: r/IAmA (73), r/sonos (2)
- Known activity in the posts we found: 2013 to 2024
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

## Moments

### u/timbl in r/IAmA, Mar 12, 2014 · Behind the scenes

Replying to a redditor:

> Tim, What other names did you consider other than the world wide web?

> Mine of Information,
> The Information Mine,
> The Mesh
>
> None had quite the right ring.
> I liked WWW partly because I could start global variable names  with a W and not have them clash with other peoples' (in a C world) ...in fact I used HT for them)

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2091d4/comment/cg0y0bp/ · 2,751 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/timbl in r/IAmA, Mar 12, 2014 · Personal story

Replying to a redditor:

> what was your first computer?

> I got a M6800 evaluation kit
>
> in 1976, and built a bunch of 3U high cards, put them in a rack with a car battery in the bottom of the crate as UPS.  All hand-soldered on veroboard
>
> , and programmed in hex.   7E XX XX was a long jump, and 20 XX a relative jump IIRC.  The display was an old TV and some logic and a bunch of discarded calculator buttons lovingly relabeled with transfer letters. Those were the days....

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2091d4/comment/cg0xpno/ · 1,945 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/timbl in r/IAmA, Mar 12, 2014 · Normal redditor

Replying to a redditor:

> Have you learned to spell referrer yet ?

> No, my speling is still terible.   Hopefully not to much or it will get into header field names without some review at this stage!

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2091d4/comment/cg0xajm/ · 1,382 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/timbl in r/IAmA, Mar 10, 2015 · Behind the scenes

Replying to a redditor:

> Do you remember your first thoughts, or words, when you achieved the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server?

> Nope.  I was head down getting stuff working.... the server and client were both on my machine at that stage... I wasn't using source code control, so I could nto go back and find the critical commit with the "hmm GET seems to work" comment :-)

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2ykyht/comment/cpai4fq/ · 1,110 points as of Nov 7, 2026