From the article: The First Time I Saw the Web - I Wasn't Even Online
Do you remember the first Web page you ever visited? Was viewing the Web for the first time a momentous occasion for you? Many Web developers remember the first time they ever saw the World Wide Web because it made them want to be a part of it. Why not share your story. Share Your Memories
Gateway to porn, not really.
- The first time I used the internet was in my next door neighbours dad's office probably around 1992. Her father was partner in a criminal lawyers in East London & was an alcoholic who spent money like it was going out of fashion. He always bought the newest toy, gadget or fully stocked wine cellar, or landscaped putting green in his back garden. Anyway, I remember it was a Gateway PC & the only thing we could think to do on it was pretend to be a neglected horny bored housewife in a chatroom. Didn't actually get the internetz myself for another 3 or 4 years.
- —Guest JayMe
Matt
- I remember getting onto one of the few machine at university that has access to the www in about '94. Not really knowing what it could do I typed in the first phrase that came to mind: 'Pamela Anderson' - I was sorely disappointed that it took around literally 5 minutes to load each picture on the page!
- —Guest Matt
Altavista & Phish.net!
- I love this idea. I remember a teacher telling me about the Web. He fired up his dialup modem (screech, screech) and his home page (Altavista) came up. He said "type anything you want to know more about." So I typed in "Phish." The first result was Phish.net and I clicked through. My eyes were opened to the power of the Web right away. To see fans of my favorite band self-organizing on the Web. I knew it would be big!
- —Guest Matt Law
Yellow Letters - Dark Screen
- Wow, that was back in the 80's. I was working at a radio station in Boston as Production Director and we bought a new computer for the copy department. It came complete with a hard drive and modem. (Advanced stuff back then.) Everyone else in the building was still using floppies. My buddy Joe, the Copy Writer, set us up with a couple of free accounts on "YellowData" a pay to play BBS. All I had to do was update the weekly top 20 songs from Radio and Records magazine to keep my account active. I think all those late nights playing on the web at the radio station was probably the main reason I wound up with a divorce! Well, that and playing "Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy" 'till all hours!
- —Guest Dave
I made the first demo for the web
- I made the first demo film to propose the web. I had 3 Amigas hooked together to make fast and colorful animation in my home studio and worked freelance for all the big companies in NYC. I was tasked to show how the web could serve people and illustrate the problems of information traffic on the phone lines. One of my animations depicting ones and zeros getting "stuck in the pipeline" apparrently looked rather suggestive and made a lot of people laugh at the conference, though I was not trying to make any X-rate number films. I will have to post this clip sometime soon as I just found it in my archives and it is pretty funny.
- —01kinoby
Compuserve
- I used to chat a lot on Compuserve before it got a pay site :-)
- —Guest Marc
Finger Plans
- I went online in 1989, before there was a Web. My college was completely networked, including our dorm rooms and we used email to communicate with each other and our professors. It's a bit surreal now that we were so connected. I even met one of my college boyfriends online in 1990! Back in the day, we had "finger plans" which were text files we could edit and other people could look at. It was sort of like your first personal homepage. I saw a few rudimentary web pages in1992, but they didn't seem like much more than text files. I did a year of Internet-free AmeriCorps and didn't see the the web again until 1994. I'm pretty sure it was through AOL until I returned to college later that year. For all that things have changed online, people still spend most of their time doing exactly the same things... sending email, chatting, sharing far too much through personal websites and playing games. Only now there's a lot more spam.
- —modChristy
ftp first, http next
- The first time I used the web browser was around 1996-97. I used it to ftp documents from a site since the command line didnt work. I eventually learned to use the web browser for what it was meant to be, browse using http :). I dont remember the first page though. I had a Windows 95, with a dial-up connection over a 56 kbps modem which was leased by MTNL, the only provider at that time in India.
- —Guest curiouschild
Some of first internet/computer memories
- I have a few first memories from the early 1980's when only a lucky few owned a computer. I laugh whenever I recall the time I stood in a Quantum Physics Professor's office with a few other students watching the professor proudly show off his new Macintosh computer. We all marveled at the wonders of how that small thing called a 'mouse' could make a tiny arrow move on the screen. It was an amazing site. Another early memory was while watching a computer expert on a TV program describe internet and it's potential future uses. "You will be able to buy things..." is the main thing I remember. One other early web memory was from a TV talk show. The show was all about the gaining popularity of a new thing called 'chatting'. A few computers were set up with people chatting while on the show. Everyone laughed in amazement that a someone could 'talk' to another person in real time as if they were on the phone. We've come a long way! Anyway, those are a few of my first web memories.
- —Guest Phyllis
Wow!
- One of my most treasured possessions is my mug from the BBSCon convention held in Colorado Springs in 1993. The convention was held by Boardwatch Magazine. For those of you who don't remember, a "BBS" was a "Bulletin Board System" and Boardwatch was the magazine that "watched" the boards. This was before the Internet took off. But at BBSCon, the Internet was the big thing. When I returned to the company I worked for, I put together a presentation for the President. It was the first time he had ever seen the Internet. He told me I was wasting my time. (Some years later, they had to buy their domain name at a hefty premium.)
- —visualbasic
Netscape and Pegasus mail
- I was in grade 7 or 8 the first time I was ever introduced to sending information over a local server. As part of a computer class, we were introduced to an email/chat program and everyone had a lot of fun sending messages back and forth (no user names--just IP numbers). It was a few years later in high school when I discovered that there was much more to the web, such as images, news, etc. It wasn't long after that, that I started learning what the web was made of and how to write html. It was so ground breaking at the time
- —Guest Melinda
2400 baud modem
- My first modem was on sale -- can you guess why? Because even way back then (about 1996) they already had lightning speed with 19,200 Kb modems on the market. I used the web for research mostly, and that was sorely lacking, and of course, painfully slow at my end. What a long way it has come baby!
- —Guest presentations
The first time
- Well, it's not like sex :-) That is, I don't remember the "first time" very well because I'm not sure I realized what I was seeing. I didn't understand "the web" -- I think I thought of it as a very long phone cord. I began hooking up to my university's main frame via a simple console with a Unix operating system Does that count, or is that only 3rd base? Then I began using email, but at the time, I think I thought of it as a souped up telegram. But I had my first real experience when my son (who was 6 at the time) insisted that we switch from CompuServ to AOL because AOL had better games. As I watched him, I knew he was showing me something I needed to know. I saw the future through his eyes. (Side note -- it's amazing when I think back to how primitive it was -- and it wasn't that long ago!)
- —Guest Susan
I Timidly Tiptoed out Into the WWW
- I joined AOL in 1985. Made a bunch of friends and had a lot of fun. But I kept reading about how people on the Worldwide Web HATED people from AOL, because we were no-nothing dummies who didn't know beans about Web etiquette. I truthfully don't remember the first page I ever saw there, except that it was one of those "vanity pages" that were so popular then. I could hardly wait to find out how to create one of my own. I eventually did, and it was beautiful, I thought then. Full of animated images, flashing text, musical background - you name it, I had it. I shudder now to think how horrible it really was, but I was very proud of it then. But it did lead to my web design business, and I gradually learned to tone down my designs.
- —frannycats
Internet in a box
- I had been using Prodigy and GEnie networks when the Web became open to the general public. I believe I got onto the web in two ways the first month or so. One was a disk for Netcom.com and the other was Internet in a Box. I know one of the first places I visited with EInet Galaxy and I signed up immediately to do their hiking and walking page. Within a month, I used internet in a box to connect with a local ISP, Teleport.com, that provided users with their own personal site and access to create email discussion groups. I created a hiking and walking web site within weeks of getting on the web. I loved the graphical and universal nature of the web compared with the membership-only dialup services such as Prodigy. It was a big kick to be listed in most of the early directories and maps to finding info on the web. I've saved a few of those!
- —Guest wb
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