Restore the files that existed at the first URL back to their earliest possible iterations
The first website contained a page that listed WWW servers. This was maintained until around 1992, when presumably it became impossible to keep up to date. One of the early websites listed on this page was for the Nikhef physics lab in the Netherlands. Willem van Leeuwen from Nikhef just got in touch to say that he's put a page back online at the original URL, and hosted some information about the early Nikhef website.
Dan Noyes on
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.
Dan Noyes on
In response to an NPR story on the CERN project to restore the first website Paul Jones got in touch to say that he has a 1991 web page put together by the WWW team as a demonstration for the Hypertext '91 conference in San Antonio, Texas. Here it is:
Dan Noyes on
Tweet from Paul Jones:
.@thefirstwebsite I have a copy of the page that @timberners_lee used to present at Hypertext 91 ibiblio.org/pjones/old.pag… others on my cube
— Paul Jones (@smalljones) May 23, 2013
Dan Noyes on
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.
Dan Noyes on
When the first website was born, it was probably quite lonely. And with few people having access to browsers - or to web servers so that they could in turn publish their own content - it must have taken a visionary leap of faith at the time to see why it was so exciting. The early WWW team, led by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, had such vision and belief. The fact that they called their technology the World Wide Web hints at the fact that they knew they had something special, something big.
Dan Noyes on
