The 6th August marked the 14th anniversary of the very first website. On 6th August 1991, Tim Berners-Lee put the site online - it simply described what a website was and how to access one. (It has been archived here if you want to take a look).
- About Tim Berners-Lee - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
For people of a certain age, 1991 seems like only yesterday; we forget just how quickly the Internet has grown into a intrinsic part of our lives. (In August 1991, Bryan Adam’s “Everything I do I do it for you” was in the middle of a mammoth run as the UK no. 1 single. That 15 weeks seemed much longer than the 14 years since . . . )
If you want to look back at the Internet of the past, visit The Internet Archive. When you arrive at the site, simply type a web address into the “Wayback Machine” and see the website as it looked in the past. For example, the early BBC website (from 1997) looked like this:
The BBC site now contains over 2 million pages; in 1997 it was little more than a collection of simple pages about BBC programmes.
Who would have thought that, in 2005, people would shop, chat, download music, play games, exchange ideas, watch movies, create weblogs and even find love in the virtual world where Sir Berners-Lee first posted his simple, text-based website? What will we be doing on the Web in another 14 years’ time?
