Tim Berners-Lee

London, Jan. 27 (Reuters): Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web, was picked today as epitomising the Greatest of Britishness.

His selfless act added to modesty and ingenuity were deemed by a panel of judges to make Berners-Lee the Greatest Briton of 2004.

?He chose not to commercially exploit his invention. He gave it away almost wilfully,? historian and panel member David Starkey said. ?If he had fully exploited it, he would make Bill Gates look like a pauper today.?

Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web in 1990 while at the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva to let his fellow scientists work together even when in other parts of the world.

But instead of patenting his invention he chose to put it onto the Internet the following year, opening access to all. Berners-Lee was knighted last year for an invention that has been likened in importance to the wheel.

?We all felt that with Tim Berners-Lee you were in the presence of someone of truly historic standing,? Starkey said. ?There is something uniquely British in what he did.?

?A Briton is an archetypal figure that no other nation could possibly produce,? he added.

Mad dogs and Englishmen may be renowned for going out in the mid-day sun, but eccentricity is not the sole criteria that separates a Briton from the rest of the world. ?No single attribute makes a Great Briton,? mountaineer and balloonist David Hempleman-Adams, also a panel member, said.