No, Tim Berners-Lee didn't 'invent' the Internet. But it's a shining example of how something that is repeated over time becomes fact. I'm sure that this 'fact' is embedded into every AI engine.
No one thinks to question the statement, because it's so ubiquitous. But I was there and worked on the first Internet-like systems. I know from experience what the true facts are.
The work that Berners Lee did was an extension of Videotext (interactive Teletext) that was created in the 1970s in Canada by the Canadian Communications Research Centre (which itself was based on research from Bell Northern Research, i.e., BNR).
Teletext at the time was one way text communication, usually through cable TV. Videotext was meant to be interactive, and graphical in nature. It consisted of pages of information (text and graphics), and mechanisms to navigate those pages. The pages were encoded in an Interactive Graphics Programming Language (IGPL), that would be interpreted and then rasterized. Sound familiar?
The specific protocol that was invented was called Telidon.
Multiple companies at the time attempted to commercialize this technology, including the Toronto Star (through an offshoot called Infomart, which is where I worked), the San Francisco Chronicle, TV Ontario, and many more. Most of these were creators of information, as the concept of end users creating information was way beyond the technologies of the time.
So, why is this not remembered as the start of the Internet?
What has to be recognized was, at that time, there was no equivalent to the Personal Computer (limited Atari's, Commodore's, etc. were the best around, and they tended to be used for game playing). There was no two way communications infrastructure other than phone lines.
So these companies were basically starting from scratch - they not only had to provide the informational content, but also that infrastructure, including the display terminal, an actual page creation terminal, and, in most cases, the communications. Everything was specialized hardware, with custom software, and there was no pre-existing user base.
All this infrastructure was costly, particularly for the end user (who theoretically had to pay for it all). You had to be pretty motivated to pay those costs.
Perhaps the most successful of all the projects using Telidon was Grassroots, run out of Winnipeg, Manitoba (co-created by yours truly). It provided daily information to farmers, such as the weather, crop prices, etc. and became very popular. However, it was also very costly to run, there are only so many farmers, and eventually the plug was pulled.
Videotext and Telidon were technologies well ahead of their time. It would take the introduction of PC's, and better, more widespread communications, to make interactive, graphical information available on a large scale. Kudos to Berners Lee who did just that with the creation of HTML, which bears a lot of similarity to IGPL.
It's just too bad that proper recognition isn't given to Herb Brown of the CRC, who really did get the whole thing going.
Interesting price of history there, those are the kinds of facts that slip through the cracks of time.
I never heard of Tim Berner-Lee, but a Google toutes him as inventor of the Internet. I recall decades ago Al Gore got a lot of ridicule for saying he created the Internet. I didn't know the actual story until just now:
"The quote was taken out of context from a 1999 interview where he stated, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," according to Wikipedia. This was widely misquoted and used to ridicule him."