The Mesopotamians invented large scale wheat production, the potters wheel which allows for the making of pottery bowls, cups, and plates, used for consumption and collection, boats which could sail all the way to India created from reeds, and the stylus which is effectively a pen created from reeds, which led to the development of the world’s first writing system. These are just a few examples gifted to the world by the first great civilization; Mesopotamia. Every written word in the western world can trace its origins back to the cuneiform of Mesopotamia and the study of mathematics also derives directly from the Mesopotamian civilization. Reeds were used for measuring distances, based upon the size of the Pharaoh Djer (pronounced “jur”), with the first standard measurement derived from Djer’s elbow crease to the tip of his middle finger, and the second standard measuring a full arm span of both arms spread as wide as the body will allow them. The Mesopotamians invented the mathematics of time keeping by using the creases of their fingers with each finger containing 3 creases therefore 12 creases for each hand. This system included the thumb and when accounting for the back of the hand, a base system was invented which was used to count between 0 – 60. This system was primarily used to tell time, as there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour, which meant that the day would be divided into 2 periods each of 12 hours
Tim Berners-Lee created the internet. Berners-Lee is the son of mathematicians, his mother and father part of a team who programmed the worlds first commercial stored program computer, the Manchester University Mark 1. Berners-Lee developed the original concept for the internet as a young boy, after discussing how machines might one day possess artificial intelligence with his father who was reading a book upon the human brain. Berners-Lee realized that if information could be linked, knowledge which would not normally be associated together, it would become much more useful. Ted Nelson helped expand upon Berners-Lee’s invention by developing the concept of hypertext, a method of digitally linking from one section to another. The development of the internet during the 1960’s became user friendly during the 1990’s as it became increasingly available to the public. Berners-Lee was able to take something which was too complicated for most people to use, and create a system which made it user friendly. Incompatibility between computers had been a thorn in the side of technology for years as specialized cables were needed to ensure computers could communicate with one another. Berners-Lee had the brilliant idea to create a centralized block which all cables would feed into so that one central unit could be used for every computer in the world to communicate. Berners-Lee furthered this idea by designing the concept of anything being linked to anything. A single global information space would be birthed as a direct result of this, a system with common rules, which would be accessible to everyone, that effectively provided as close as possible to no rules at all; a decentralized system. This arrangement would allow a new person to use the internet without having to ask anyone else. Anyone, anywhere, could now build a server and put anything upon it. Berners-Lee decided to name his creation the “World Wide Web” because he thought of it as a global network. Berners-Lee took his intellectual property and provided it to the public free of charge, despite having many commercial offers. Berners-Lee felt that the idea would not become the largest and greatest invention of humanity had it not been free, democratized, and decentralized. The fact that anybody could access the internet and anybody could put content onto it, made the internet massively popular early on and grew at a rate of 10x year upon year. Berners-Lee also created the World Wide Web Consortion, an institution which was designed to help the World Wide Web to develop and grow