CERN celebrates 20th birthday of world's first website

It's safe to say that the web was a tad successful, eh?

The web as we know it was famously invented by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, but it wasn't until a few years later -- 1993 to be precise -- that it'd truly be set free. On April 30 of that year, Berners-Lee's then employer would make the technology behind the WWW available license free, bundling a basic browser and some key chunks of code into the deal.


To commemorate the 20th anniversary of this event CERN has recreated the first ever website, complete with its original URL [Ed: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html]. The preservation doesn't stop at copying over some old files, either, with CERN also looking to preserve the first servers used, restoring as much as possible to its original state. Beyond a little geeky nostalgia, the project hopes to safeguard the web's earliest days, before it became the ubiquitous phenomenon it is now, so that future generations can enjoy (and scoff) at the web's origins. Best of all, no drawn-out field trip is required to enjoy the spectacle, you can see it just as nature intended by heading to the source.

Even more amazing: the first website didn't involve cats or porn.


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.