Preserve the data on the NeXT machines

1999 backup of TBL's NeXT hard drive surfaces

Dan Noyes — Mon, 27 May 2013 12:47:50 +0000

I got a phone call from a rather excited Peter Jurcso this morning, a colleague in the CERN Beams department:

"I hear you're tracking down old web stuff."

"Yes," I replied. "Amongst other things."

"I have a 1999 backup of the NeXT hard drive. Would you like it? I can come by around midday."

True to his word, Peter turned up with a CD.

First thing we did was to back it up in a couple of different places, fingers trembling.

Images of TBL's NeXT being serviced in 2009

Dan Noyes — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:21:12 +0000

In August 2009 a team from the Association aBCM in Lausanne came to CERN to give the world's first web server a health check under the watchful eye of web pioneer Robert Cailliau. They took an image of the hard drive at this time, copies of which were given to Robert Cailliau and Tim Berners-Lee. See photos of the process here

Help with the NeXT

Dan Noyes — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:57:57 +0000

We had some good leads this week for help with the NeXT which I thought I would share here briefly in response to a number of "what's happening?" queries we are getting.

We want to do a couple of things with the NeXT:

Huge interest

Dan Noyes — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:34:40 +0000

We were quite astonished at the level of interest in the project when it was announced yesterday, on the twentieth anniversary of CERN making WWW royalty free. Hundreds of thousands of people came to check in on the first website and to learn about the project to restore it.

We have a great number of leads that came up following yesterday's publicity. People who have old machines lying around; copies of files that may be of use; expertise; ideas; stories. This is fantastic. Thank you.