Robert Hartill (born 30 January 1969 in

Pontypridd Pontypridd ( , ), Colloquialism, colloquially referred to as ''Ponty'', is a town and a Community (Wales), community in Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales, approximately 10 miles north west of Cardiff city centre. Geography Pontypridd comprises the ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

) is a

computer programmer A programmer, computer programmer or coder is an author of computer source code someone with skill in computer programming. The professional titles ''software developer'' and ''software engineer'' are used for jobs that require a progr ...

and web designer. He created the first web-based version of the

Internet Movie Database IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

. He has also worked on the Apache

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

and played a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Hartill grew up in Wales, and studied computer science at University of Wales College, Cardiff where he earned a BSc and PhD. In 1993, he became involved with the rec.arts.movies database that went on to become the

(IMDb). On 5 August 1993 he announced the first web version of the database. In 1994, Hartill moved to Los Alamos in

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

to work at the

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

on the ArXiv.org e-print archive with Paul Ginsparg. At the same time, he was a co-founder of the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...

, and made many contributions to the early development of the

Apache HTTP Server The Apache HTTP Server ( ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source cross-platform web server, released under the terms of Apache License, Apache License 2.0. It is developed and maintained by a community of developers under the ...

. In 1994, Hartill was one of six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the first international conference on the World Wide Web. In 1996, the

was founded, and Hartill returned to Ogmore-by-Sea in Wales before leaving the IMDb in 2000 and emigrating to

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...

in May 2003.

References

External links

IMDb History
British computer programmers People from Pontypridd Alumni of Cardiff University Living people Hartill Welsh emigrants to Australia People educated at Ysgol Gyfun Garth Olwg Los Alamos National Laboratory personnel {{Australia-bio-stub

See also

References

External links