World Wide Web Flashback
by Frank Jovine on 10/24/2009 in Internet
Before I get started, I’d like to share with you on how I started in web development. I was on an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) back in 1992, old school chat technology. I wrote my first HTML tag which was the image tag, you know the one – <img src=”http://thesource.com/images/theimage.gif”>. The image I used was Felix the Cat walking across the IRC screen for everyone to see. The people in the chat were amazed and asked me how I did it. This is what gave me the drive to learn and develop websites.
Who’s Felix the Cat? He was the first international cartoon superstar. Felix uses his charm and boundless imagination to outwit the nasty Professor and his cigar-chomping henchman Rock Bottom, who are always close by with another crazy scheme to catch Felix.
8 World Wide Web Facts
Oldest Website: Create date and Domain name 15-Mar-1985 http://www.symbolics.com/
According to most people, symbolics.com is the oldest registered domain, registered on 15th March 1985. Some people also say that http://info.cern.ch/ is the oldest site, although you can no longer access it. That was Burners-Lee’s test server.
Oldest Browser: Mosiac 0.1 Mar. 1993 – This was the first announcement of the first public Mosaic pre-release, available for a few various flavors of Unix on X-Windows. It was produced by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which licenses its code under the name of Spyglass.
First Image: This image was the first image on the internet and appeared in 1992. The image was uploaded by programmer Silvano de Gennaro in Geneva at the request of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. I am sure this wasn’t porn back in 1992. In fact, porn images were the most popular images sent across email and chat rooms in the 90’s. Today, there are many porn related websites.
First Email Spam: The first spam e-mail was sent out in 1978 by Gary Thuerk, a marketing rep for DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). They went out of business in 1998. You can read the reaction and original email spam message here.
First Item Sold on eBay: Pierre Omidyar started eBay in September of 1995. And Omidyar sold the first item on eBay – a broken laser pointer that went for $14. Did the seller and founder receive a poor rating?
First Search Engine: The first search engine was called Archie, and was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Alan hung himself in 2004.
First Domain Name: The first domain name ever was Symbolics.com, registered on March 15th, 1985, by a computer manufacturing company called Symbolics. The website no longer exists.
First Porn Website: There are many people who say that the first porn site was sex.com. It was registered in 1994 by a guy named Gary Kremen.
If you remember any of these historic events on the WWW, than you’ve been around the block more than once.
christie
Oct 24th, 2009
Oh I remember Archie! I won’t admit to any of the others.
I was on Prodigy.com in the early 90s, and when they announced that we could now email people who were not Prodigy members, I was so excited. Actually I was prematurely excited, because I now had to learn about Archie and I didn’t exactly have any internet email addresses to send to. But suddenly the whole world had opened up, right there in my computer.
Frank J
Oct 24th, 2009
Christie,
I was on Prodigy back in the day as well. We must be in the same generation.
Jonathan - Advanced Life Skills
Oct 24th, 2009
Hey Frank, I didn’t know any of this stuff. I resisted the online world until 2000 when I got my first laptop.
Frank J
Oct 24th, 2009
Jonathan,
Now you have a little history knowledge.
BunnygotBlog
Oct 24th, 2009
Thanks for the history lesson. I didn’t know any of this but I will share it with my husband, I am sure he know it.
Frank J
Oct 24th, 2009
Thanks Bunny and I am sure he will enjoy the read.
Hicham
Oct 25th, 2009
Frank, those are such interesting facts, especially the “Felix Cat” and my avatar tells why
I think the early 90s stepped into the internet world because the PC became more accessible for public due to (Apple) and (Mircrosoft) operating systems and this is my analysis not a professional conclusion.
Your post reminds me with an earlier one I wrote in the last month; I recall being online since 1998 which is not bad for my generation of the 30s! Thanks for the info and Felix, again
Frank J
Oct 25th, 2009
Hicham,
Glad you enjoyed a little flashback!
HART (1-800-HART)
Oct 25th, 2009
I remember chatting online about that first “eBay” item sold as I’ve been online since March 1995 (aware since Jan/95) .. I think the general consensus in the chat room forum or PowWow or mIrc or wherever we discussed that ..is that THAT has got to be the most stupidest thing ya ever heard. Selling junk online to people you didn’t know? It must be a scam to obtain mailing addresses and identity theft. And geeesh .. just because you add an “e” before a site doesn’t mean it’s really electronic …
(or something like that).
Nice walk down memory lane
John
Oct 26th, 2009
Wikipedia says that Alan Emtage is still alive and working away at the web! Now fess up, did thinking about Geocities inspire this post at all? I’ve been walking down memory lane, lately as well. It was probably around ‘94 or ‘95 that we got cheap dial-up access, and today’s online world doesn’t resemble that in the slightest.
Frank J
Oct 26th, 2009
John,
Geocities (RIP) had nothing to do with this post, but it would have been a good mention. Alan is a live?
Mathdelane
Oct 26th, 2009
Among these stuff, it’s only Tim Berners-Lee that I’m familiar with but who wouldn’t know that? The Internet hasn’t been born yet in Manila in ‘94.
Frank J
Oct 26th, 2009
Mathdelane,
At least you knew one fact!
Joanie
Oct 28th, 2009
How about gopher? I remember using it and thinking it was great stuff.
Frank J
Oct 28th, 2009
Joanie,
You are showing our age. LOL!!!
http://www.all-about.tv/
Nov 4th, 2009
I added this post to my favorites <3 More of this plz