Today is the anniversary of the first web page, the first part of what was called “The Open Web” and is now just called “the web” or “the internet.” Before 1993, the internet was a closed network of computers that required special skills to navigate, and if you wanted to connect, the best place to go was the computer department of your local university.
In the 1990s we got connected at home. In the 2000s we started walking around with the internet in our pockets and purses. In the 2010s we may just wear it on our eyeglasses. None of it would be possible without the very first web page. It was up and running in 1992, but today’s anniversary is important because on this date in 1993, HTML (the language that sits behind all web pages) was released to the public royalty-free, making the internet as we know it possible.
We showed it to you before… and it isn’t much to look at. According to PC Magazine the first web page has gone back to its roots, meaning that if you go to http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html you’ll see it back at its orginal URL. That was, in fact, the very first publicly available URL.
20 years later there are millions and millions of sites… but it all started there, 20 years ago today.