Tim Berners Lee - the father of the web

Tim Berners-Lee in CERN developed the foundation of what became the world wide web.

What problem was he trying to solve?

He was trying to make a simple way for academics to share ideas and cross reference them with each other through the internet. He invented two core technologies of the web - HTML and HTTP.

This is a critical question since understanding what problem he was trying to solve gives perspective in knowing what parts of the standard make sense to apply to modern problems and more importantly what parts do not make sense to apply.