Part 1

Welcome to the first phase of the sophomore research paper! Through a series of research assignments this year, you will work closely with your teacher to produce a scholarly research paper of 5-7 pages. You will practice consulting and interpreting a variety of types of primary and secondary sources, and you will also practice using MLA 9 citations correctly. 

Put the name of the person you want to research in the box. Write a sentence or two about why this person is interesting to you. 

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: He created the first world wide network for the purpose of sharing medical documents with

Notes from Research Starter Source: (PUT YOUR IN-TEXT CITATION HERE) (Finkleman)

Now, read and take notes about your person! Focus on the parts of their life that you find most interesting. You do not need to write down everything, but you should start to capture a clear timeline of their life and a substantial number of specific historical details that you may want to use later. Online sources rarely have page numbers, but if yours does, write down the page numbers for future in-text citations. 

Works Cited

"Tim Berners-Lee." Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.

Narrowing Your Topic:

List 2-3 things about your person that you find especially intriguing and that you would like to learn more about. 

  1. Educated at "The queens college, Oxford"

  2. Wrote the whole program at CERN on NeXTSTEP, and created the first HTTPd protocol

  3. Was knighted by queen Elizabeth for "inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the Web to scale"

Notes from Wikipedia Article: (PUT YOUR IN-TEXT CITATION HERE) (“Jackie Robinson”)

Now, go to the Wikipedia article that you have open. Try to find at least one section (perhaps 1-3 paragraphs) that give more, or new details, about one of the topics you have listed above. 

Works Cited

"Tim Berners-Lee." Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee. Accessed 9 Feb. 2023.

Take some additional notes to record these facts. Focus on getting new, specific historical evidence into your notes -- dates, events, important people, organizations, accomplishments, and so on. 

Part 2:

While working at CERN, Tim BL Understood the importance of communication throughout the company. He found it tiresome to transfer files physically to look at documents on his computer through hypertext. So as a result of his necessity, he created a program that uses Secure tunneling to access hypertext files from a server and read them remotely. This was the first user-to-website interaction. After that, the program expanded throughout CERN to store files on the server system, eventually becoming a global network of files for researchers to access.

Then, come up with two possible research questions that start with how or why. After you submit this assignment, I will help you fine-tune the language and decide on one final research question. 

Question Option 1 

Why did TBL write ENQUIRE? How was it different from other secure protocols?

Question Option 2

In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web. Berners-Lee made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. Why would TBL have founded the web on the ideas of royalty-free technology, and how would this effect the growth of the internet in decades to come?

Last update: June 5, 2023
Created: June 5, 2023