CERN resurrects first ever website

In honour of the 20th anniversary of the release of libwww into the public domain (news passim), CERN has resurrected the first ever website at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

As screenshot of the front page of this historic site is shown below, as seen by the text-based lynx web browser.

This very first website at CERN – and in the world – was dedicated to the World Wide Web project itself and was hosted on Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer. The website described the basic features of the web; how to access other people’s documents and how to set up your own server. Although the NeXT machine – the original web server – is still at CERN, sadly the world’s first website is no longer online at its original address, but is still available if you follow the above link.

To mark the anniversary, CERN is starting a project to restore the first website and to preserve the digital assets that are associated with the birth of the web.