When physicist Tim Berners-Lee started writing the software that would form the basis of the World Wide Web, he called the program 'Enquire'.
The name was his shorthand version of a book offering Victorian advice, Enquire Within Upon Everything, which he read as a child growing up outside London.
In his book Weaving the Web, published in 1999, he described that old tome as a useful portal to a range of information, from tips on how to invest to mundane concerns such as removing garment stains.
He said it was 'a primitive starting point' to creating that part of the internet we most often use and write in abbreviated form as 'WWW', or call simply the Web - a universe of network-accessible information.
The Web's outstanding feature is known as hypertext, a system of immediate cross-referencing that fundamentally changed the way the internet is used.
In recognition of his services to the global development of the internet, Buckingham Palace last week bestowed a knighthood on Mr Berners-Lee, a British citizen who lives in the United States.