The man who invented the Web could have become the first trillionaire instead of Elon Musk. He chose not to. His name is Tim Berners-Lee. In 1989, while working at CERN, he invented HTTP, HTML and the URL system. The entire architecture the internet still runs on today. He never tried to turn it into a proprietary business. In 1993, CERN's directors signed a two-page memo handing the entire thing to the public for free. At the exact same time, a rival protocol called Gopher tried charging licensing fees for something similar. Nobody remembers Gopher's name today. Berners-Lee has explained the decision plainly. "Had I patented the web, I could have been a billionaire. But I didn't, and I'm happy with that." He built the foundation of an industry now worth trillions of dollars and never took a cut. In 2021 he auctioned the original web source code as an NFT for $5.4 million. He donated every dollar to charity.