From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This list includes sites on the World Wide Web founded prior to 1995 which are particularly notable because:

• They have existed continuously (or under other names) up to the present day.
• They had particular influence or popularity in the History of the World Wide Web.
• They are the first or best early example of now commonplace Web content such as webcomics or weblogs.

1991

Gopher Search Engine

The Gopher Search Engine; one of the internet's earliest search engines.

CERN

The link is a snapshot of the CERN site, the first website, as of November 1992. The Web was publicly announced (via a posting to alt.hypertext) on August 6, 1991.

World Wide Web Virtual Library

Originally Tim Berners-Lee's web catalog at CERN.

Digital Picture Archive on the 17th Floor

First operating from Delft University of Technology as an anonymous FTP site, then a gopher server and finally a WWW server, this collection of miscellaneous digital images was one of the first image repositories. By 1994 it had to be throttled back because the traffic was overwhelming the networks at Delft.

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Paul Kunz from SLAC visited Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in September 1991. He was impressed by the WWW project and brought a copy of the software back to Stanford. SLAC launched the first web server in North America on December 12, 1991. [1]

1992

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications site was an early home to the NCSA Mosaic web browser, as well as documentation on the web and a "What's New?" list which many people used as an early web directory.

Fermilab

Second web server in North America, following in the trend of high-energy physics laboratories.

SunSITE

Early, comprehensive archiving project. Project as a whole started in 1992 and was quick to move to the web.

1993

By the end of 1993, there were 623 websites, according to a study by MIT Researcher Matthew Gray. [2]

Doctor Fun

First webcomic, noted by the NCSA as "a major breakthrough for the Web".

The LANL preprint archive

Web access to thousands of papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, and biology; developed out of earlier gopher, ftp, and e-mail archives at Los Alamos. Now housed at lanl.arxiv.org

Global Network Navigator

Example of an early web directory, and one of the Web's first commercial sites. Created by O'Reilly Media.

Heaven's Gate

A spin off of Heaven's Gate BBS, a pet memorial website.

The Internet Movie Database

Founded in 1989 by participants in the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies, the IMDB was rolled out on the web in late 1993, hosted by the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales.

Internet Underground Music Archive

Created by students at the University of California, Santa Cruz to help promote unsigned musical artists. Music was shared using the MP2 format, presaging the later extreme popularity of MP3 sharing and Online music stores.

JaysHouse MOO

Perhaps the first web-based MUD (multi-user dungeon), ancestor of today's MMORPGs.

SITO

After a start as an anonymous ftp-based art gallery and collaborative collective, the OTIS project (later SITO) moves to the web thanks to SunSITE's hosting.

The MIT Tech

The MIT campus newspaper, The Tech, claims to be the first newspaper to deliver content over the Web, beginning in May 1993. [3]

MTV

The music television network's domain was registered in 1993 by VJ Adam Curry, who personally ran a small unofficial site.

PARC Map Server

Arguably the earliest precursor of MapQuest and Google Maps. PARC Researcher Steve Putz tied an existing map viewing program to the web. Now defunct.[4]

Principia Cybernetica

Probably the first complex, collaborative knowledge system, sporting a hierarchical structure, index, map, annotations, search, plenty of hyperlinks, etc. Designed by Francis Heylighen, Cliff Joslyn and Valentin Turchin to develop a cybernetic philosophy.

Trojan room coffee pot

The first webcam.

1994

By mid-1994 there were 2738 websites, according to Gray's statistics; by the end of the year, more than 10,000.

Art.Net

"Art on the Net", created by Lile Elam in June 1994 to showcase the artwork of San Francisco Bay Area artists as well as other international artists. It offered free linkage and hosts extensive links to other artists' sites.

The Amazing FishCam 

A webcam pointed at a fishtank located at Netscape headquarters. According to a contemporaneous article by The Economist, "In its audacious uselessness—and that of thousands of ego trips like it—lie the seeds of the Internet revolution."

Bianca's Smut Shack

An early web-based chatroom and online community known for raucous free speech and deviant behavior.

Birmingham City Council

early local government site, initially hosted by the University of Birmingham at http://assist.cs.bham.ac.uk:8080/, latterly at http://www.birmingham.gov.uk^[1]

Cool Site of the Day

Founded by Glenn Davis at InfiNet in 1994, who selected one 'cool' website per day to highlight. InfiNet ceased operating it in 1998. The site is currently a promotion service, which charges $27 for a site to be 'reviewed'.

Einet Galaxy

Claims to be the first searchable web catalog; originally created at the Einet division of the MCC Research Consortium at the University of Texas, Austin. It passed through several commercial owners and is now run by Logika Corporation.

First Virtual

First "cyber-bank".

FogCam!

World's oldest still operating webcam. Located at San Francisco State University.

HotWired

Website of Wired magazine with its own unique and innovative online content. Home of the first banner ads, for Zima and AT&T.[5][6]

Internet Shopping Network

First internet shopping mall.

Justin Hall's Links from the Underground

One of the earliest examples of personal weblogging.

Lycos

Early search engine, originally a university research project by Dr. Michael Mauldin.

Museum of Bad Art

Website of a museum "dedicated to the tongue-in-cheek display of poorly conceived or executed examples of Outsider Art in the form of paintings or sculpture."

The Nine Planets

"A Multimedia Tour of the Solar System", created by Bill Arnett. One of the first extensively multimedia sites.

Nando.net

One of the first newspaper sites, the online presence of the Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer.

Pizza Hut

The pizza delivery restaurant allows people in Santa Cruz, California to order pizza over the Web. [7]

Sex.com

Subject of a twelve-year legal battle that established parameters of domain ownership.

The Simpsons Archive

The very first fan site for The Simpsons television show.

SpinnWebe

Early humor site, called "a window on the weird" by The New Yorker.

The WWW Useless Pages

Perhaps the first site which showcased bad or eccentric websites rather than 'cool' ones.

Whitehouse.gov

The official website of the White House.

World-Wide Web Worm

Another early web crawler, opened in October 1994.

Yahoo!

Originally started as "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web"; later Yahoo without the exclamation mark.

References