Have you ever wondered when the very first smiley face was made? Or what was the very first image uploaded to the Internet? Good news, the “Internet Museum” has all the answers.
From the first spam to the first iPhone
Put online by Neal Agarwal, an American developer, the museum presents, in chronological order, all the major events that have shaped the modern web. From the very first ARPANET map in 1977 to the presentation of the first iPhone in 2007, including the legendary Space Jam site, it is possible to rediscover all the “works” that have marked the evolution of the web.
Did you know, for example, that the very first spam was sent in 1982 by a certain Gary Thuerk? The letter, which the 320 intended recipients were unpleasantly surprised to find in their mailboxes, extolled the merits of the DECSYSTEM-20, a computer of the time. The term “spam” itself did not yet exist at the time and would not be invented until years later.
A fully multimedia museum
The first appearance of the term “LOL” dates back to 1989. The term saw the light of day in a newsletter published on Fidonet, a file exchange system based on telephone lines at the time. . The first smileys are even older, dating from 1983. These were used to “ mark the difference between jokey content and more serious content » according to Scott Fahlman, the scientist who started the trend.
But the most interesting aspect of the site is that all the works are presented in their original settings. Each image is clickable, each text selectable, each MP3 listenable, etc. You can therefore browse the very first McDonald’s site as we did in 1996 or download the most popular MP3s of the time via a Napster window which should evoke memories for older Internet users. Be careful, that said, you may well have some surprises if you try to play illegally acquired audio files…
Source: Internet Artifacts – Neal.fun
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