It was back in 1989 that British CERN physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee began working on what has become a ubiquitous facet of all our lives today - the World Wide Web. To mark the 20-year anniversary of the feat, CERN is launching an ambitious project to restore the very first web pages ever made to their original glory.
"There is no sector of society that has not been transformed by the invention, in a physics laboratory, of the web," says Rolf Heuer, CERN Director-General. "From research to business and education, the web has been reshaping the way we communicate, work, innovate and live. The web is a powerful example of the way that basic research benefits humankind."
Those interested in seeing what a 1992 copy (CERN detectives are hunting for earlier versions) of the first webpage looks like, can do so here.
Berners-Lee originally developed the World Wide Web, or W3, with the original intent of fostering an open network of communication between scientists and universities in order to better share data and findings.
The CERN developers even relinquished any rights to it, asking for everybody to chip in and use it, and that nobody could claim a right to the service. The open-sourced nature of the project is something many feel has been lost today.
"This universal access of information and flexibility of delivery is something that we are struggling to re-create and deal with now," Dan Noyes, the web manager for CERN's communication group, told the BBC. "Present-day browsers offer gorgeous experiences but when we go back and look at the early browsers I think we have lost some of the features that Tim Berners-Lee had in mind."
Interesting fact? The first webpage was hosted on a NeXT server. NeXT was the brainchild of Apple's Steve Jobs when he was ousted from his own company and CERN scientists are hard at work restoring this relic so that it may be used to provide a completely vintage web experience.
"We have made a check-up of the NeXT, removed the dust, changed the lithium battery of the RTC and made a backup of the hard drive," reads a CERN blog post," reads a CERN blog post.