Scientists Searching for World's First Web Page

[Monroe]

Found this interesting article ... the article is long so I posted just a small part of it.

Scientists searching for world's first web page turn to North Carolina

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/06/11/scientists-searching-for-world-first-web-page-turn-to-north-carolina/?test=latestnews

For the European physicists who created the World Wide Web, preserving its history is as elusive as unlocking the mysteries of how the universe began.

The scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, are searching for the first Web page. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1990 as an unsanctioned project, using a NeXT computer that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs designed in the late 80s during his 12-year exile from the company.

Dan Noyes oversees CERN's website and has taken on the project to uncover the world's first Web page. He says that no matter how much data they sort through, researchers may never make a clear-cut discovery of the original web page because of the nature of how data is shared.

"The concept of the earliest Web page is kind of strange," Noyes said. "It's not like a book. A book exists through time. Data gets overwritten and looped around. To some extent, it is futile."

In April, CERN restored a 1992 copy of the first-ever website that Berners-Lee created to arrange CERN-related information. It was the earliest copy CERN could find at the time, and Noyes promised then to keep looking.

After National Public Radio did a story on the search, a professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill came forward with a 1991 version. Paul Jones met Berners-Lee during the British scientist's visit to the U.S. for a conference in 1991, just a year after Berners-Lee invented the Web. Jones said Berners-Lee shared the page with the professor, who has transferred it from server to server through the years. A version remains on the Internet today at an archive Jones runs, ibiblio.

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[Tripredacus]

When they are saying "web page" do they specifically mean the first ever HTML file published to the internet? Or more specifically, the "www" which is only part of the internet but no one calls it the www anymore.

[bphlpt]

From this I assumed the latter, if I understood what you, and they, meant:

In April, CERN restored a 1992 copy of the first-ever website that Berners-Lee created to arrange CERN-related information. It was the earliest copy CERN could find at the time, and Noyes promised then to keep looking.

Cheers and Regards

[jaclaz]

What they are looking for looks VERY similar to this:

http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

(which is the 1992 version)

And this is the 1991 version (that Jones has preserved on ibiblio):

http://first-website.web.cern.ch/blog/1991-web-page-found-password-lost

http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/old.page.html

jaclaz

[Monroe]

Very good work ... was wondering what these early web pages actually did look like ... now we know, thanks to "The Finder".

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[ROTS]

I love how it was back then, when webpages had a little banner, and you would cliick away to the next HTML page. No fancy javascript ( C ), no tricks or loopholes. Back when a person could run a server off their phone wire ( which I believe a person could still do today, ) and not have the FB1 come bursting thru the windows, and ceiling lights. I mean it still exsist today, but too many dumb people are using the internet.

By dumb, I mean the people who shun anybody who is apart of computer programming world in general. Like how nowadays everybody is using their smart phones to text and send pictures, a person could even find out where you live and your E-mail address with barely any effort. It is like a nightmare living in todays world with computers.

I miss when the internet looked like that. But scientists are flawed. The worlds first webpages are also the worlds first servers. Meaning anything that holds numerical data, stored in a rom chip, and can be connected and move files or information back and forth. So that would probably be a cross between a telephone.

Correct me if I am wrong, computers have been in use even before the 1960's with telephones. Thinking back to Steve Jobbs invention of the telephone box, where you can make a phone call to anybody in the world, and he called the pope. Ha ha ha.

So I guess the first webpages were phone addresses like the ones they use for the stock exchange and nowadays television transmissions??? Yeah phone = internet.

I miss my 10 cents per minute, and you could use the "Caller ID" for free, via machine. Caller ID was also something free. I want to go back to cheap phone service. 49.99

a month for nationwide and caller ID. What a waste of money.