Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Web, will auction 9.5 thousand lines of source code underlying the World Wide Web at Sotheby's as an NFT token, Bloomberg reports.
In 1989, British computer scientist @timberners_lee invented the World Wide Web in a moment that changed the world forever. Now, Sir Tim will offer the source code for the Web as an NFT in a historic one-off sale. Thread below (1/4)#ThisChangedEverything pic.twitter.com/nYvBFrz0Zr
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) June 15, 2021
The World Wide Web code was written by British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee between 1990 and 1991. In April 2021, Tim Berners-Lee contacted Sotheby's administration with the idea of putting up a lot. The files were saved in a tar archive with their original time stamps.
The NFT token will include 4 unique positions:
- Source files with time stamps containing the program code of 1990 and 1991.
- A 30-minute animated video with a visualization of the written code.
- An autograph and letter from Berners-Lee reflecting on the code and the process of its creation.
- A digital poster with all the lines of code.
The lot will include HTML, HTTP, and URL.
The year of birth of the World Wide Web is considered 1989, but at that time, only the idea of its creation just appeared. The WWW code itself was actually written between 1990 and 1991.
The auction for the lot "This Changed Everything" will be held from June 23 to June 30, and the initial bid for the lot will be $1,000. All proceeds from the sale of the lot will go to the personal initiatives supported by Berners-Lee and his wife, Rosemary Leith.