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Al Gore Put In Internet Hall Of Fame

Former Vice President Al Gore.
Joe Kohen
/
Getty Images for Current TV
Former Vice President Al Gore.

We're sorry to be a day late — you'd think in the Internet age we would have been more on top of this.

Former Vice President Al Gore (D) is among the inaugural inductees in the Internet Hall of Fame.

He's been lauded by the Internet Society for being "a key proponent [as a senator and vice president] of sponsoring legislation that funded the expansion of and greater public access to the Internet."

Before everyone asks — here's what Gore said back in 1999 that lead to critics and comedians saying he claimed to have invented the Internet:

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, according to a transcript posted by the cable news network, Gore said that "during my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

According to the Internet Society, "Gore recognized the importance of building the information infrastructure and making it available to everyone."

The full list of inductees is here. They include Tim Berners-Lee, for inventing the World Wide Web.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.