Stanford Brings Back World Wide Web's Beginnings

STANFORD (KPIX 5) -- In 1991, scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, wanted an easy way to share their research. So physicist Tony Johnson and his colleague Paul Kunz went to France to learn about a revolutionary idea called the Internet.

"We both immediately thought of ways that we could use that in our own work," Johnson told KPIX 5.

Kunz came back and posted a list of scientists and their writings. That index, as simple as it appears, was the country's first website and the birth of the World Wide Web in America.

A project called Stanford Wayback has brought the early websites into public view. You can see the progression of technology, including the very first moving graphic on the web, a spinning screwdriver.

Down in the basement, at the lab's archive, there are documents from when the World Wide Web was considered a "project." And one day, SLAC archivist Jean Dekin got a call that they had found an old computer in Paul Kunz's office.

"And it's got a label on it that says it's "historic," do you want to come look at it? I'll be right there," Dekin said.

The computer is the one that started it all, the first server to carry the internet in North America.

"Yeah, I still get goose bumps thinking about it. Yeah, we saved it," Dekin said

And while no one can predict where the internet will take us, here they are preserving its past.