Big moments of Internet history

A look back at who was the first to mark their territory in the online space

September 16, 2012

As a relatively “new” medium, the Internet has seen many firsts in the last 20 years.

The first website, first image, first domain name, e-mail, and YouTube video, are all pivotal points in the evolution of the web as we know it.

First website

The first website was built by Tim Berners-Lee at http://info.cern.ch/ while working at CERN, and was put online on 6 August 1991 (it’s no longer live).

The first web page had the address http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html which contained information about the World Wide Web project. It provided an explanation about what the internet was, how to get your own browser, how to set up your own web server, and other details about the World Wide Web project.

That specific page no longer exists but a later copy from 1992 is available on W3C’s site.

First image

The first image ever uploaded to the web was of a promotional shot for Les Horrbles Cernettes.

Les Horrbles Cernettes were a musical/comedy group comprised of assistants and significant others of CERN scientists.

The photo was tweaked with version one of Photoshop, and uploaded by Tim Berners-Lee himself.

Les Horrbles Cernettes – the first image uploaded to the web

The first domain name

The first domain name ever registered on the Internet was “symbolics.com”.

It was registered on March 15, 1985, by the now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics.

In 2009, the domain was sold to XF.com Investments for an undisclosed sum.

First e-mail

The first e-mail ever sent is accredited to Ray Tomlinson in 1971.

Tomlinson is also famous for having introduced the use of the “@” symbol in e-mail addresses to separate the name of the user from the name of the user’s machine.

There had been similar electronic mailing systems since the early ‘60s, but these were limited to exchanging messages with users on the same mainframe computer.