Burriss: Recreating first web page

By LARRY BURRISS

There has been a lot of talk lately about cloning. You know, recreating extinct plants or animals.
But here's an interesting bit of news about bringing something back from the dead: A team at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has re-created the very first web page, designed in 1992 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. And unlike the first connections, which were pretty much limited to universities and government agencies, today anyone can go to the CERN web site and see what was going on a little more than 20 years ago.

The "how" and "why" of the project are interesting, but what is even more fascinating is what was, and was not, available on this new-fangled thing, called the World Wide Web.
For example, the "web" had links to 17 different subjects, mostly related to the hard sciences, although there were links to law and religion. The law link dealt with copyright law, and religion link had connections to the King James Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Koran.

The original site provided a link to reading materials about the Internet, including the web, and talked about something called "convergence." Yes, 20 years ago technicians were talking about how various forms of the Internet can be converged. And what were those forms: well, how many of you remember terms like WAIS, File Transfer Protocol and mail robot?

The site also has some tips for people who might want to help the web expand. The most important tip, and I quote here: "put up some data." Notice what you didn't do: "post" or "link."

But you know what is even more unbelievable: the web is only 20 years old, yet it took a special project, using some of the most brilliant minds in the world, to bring the baby web back to life.