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The First Image Published on the Web

rcastro0 writes "A charming picture of "Les Horribles Cernettes" was the first ever to grace a web browser window, according to Silvano de Gennaro from the CERN Music Club site. He writes 'Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of "the CERN girls" to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the "World Wide Web".' As an aside, the all-girl rock band is still singing about "colliders, quarks, microwaves, antiprotons and the Internet.""

283 comments

  1. Gasp! by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
    "A charming picture of "Les Horribles Cernettes"... the all-girl rock band is still singing about "colliders, quarks, microwaves, antiprotons and the Internet."

    Gasp! Girl geeks! Be still my beating heart!

    Vital measurments: 503px by 400px w00-w00!

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Gasp! by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
      > Gasp! Girl geeks! Be still my beating heart!
      >Vital measurments: 503px by 400px w00-w00!

      LHC? Hey, it gave me a hadron.

    2. Re:Gasp! by drgonzo59 · · Score: 0

      I should have gone into physics! Do computer geeks have their own exclusive girl band? I don't think so.

      And I can only imagine the number of comments with the words 'hadron' and 'the Cernettes' together...

    3. Re:Gasp! by RevDobbs · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Curious that the "first image on the web" is a JPEG with over 77 thousand colors... especially as Mosaic didn't get inline .jpg support until Spring '95, if I recall correctly.

      People looking to rewrite history should do their homework first :-)

    4. Re:Gasp! by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah and it's even weirder when you remember the WWW predates the graphical browser. So I guess Tim Berner's Lee posted the image but no one saw it until Mosaic was released.

      --
      Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
    5. Re:Gasp! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mosaic wasn't the first GUI web browser. IIRC, that was Berners-Lee's browser that he wrote for a NeXT machine. He could have had .jpg support long before Mosaic.

    6. Re:Gasp! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whats to say people didn't download the image and view it with some other viewer? I remember downloading images on compuserve's dos interface which only viewed once they were complete, same kind of thing.

    7. Re:Gasp! by damiam · · Score: 1

      There were image viewers available before graphical browsers. You just couldn't view pictures inline.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    8. Re:Gasp! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just hear how they sing 'your collider'... rrrrr...

    9. Re:Gasp! by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "Gasp! Girl geeks! Be still my beating heart!"

      From 1992? They're like old now.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    10. Re:Gasp! by rk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, that's okay, 'cause so am I. :D

    11. Re:Gasp! by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well, back in 1992 the web was mostly text. For a 217K image, you didn't view the picture inline on a webpage.

      You would download the file and view the image in an external image viewer; sort of like how you would do it via FTP or Gopher.

      And yes, I remember having a 1200 Baud modem, which was about as fast as the LHC is right now under the Slashdot effect :)

    12. Re:Gasp! by Kirth · · Score: 1

      What is LHC.

      We actually had an enlightening visit to CERN with our physics-professor with explanations done by the chief-engineer (was luck, because this guy had an idea about everything) and a researcher (not so much luck, he only knew about some of his favourite beta-particles, a classical example of a "fachidiot").

      Probably the first time somebody played the blues harp down in those accelerator-tunnels (me) ;)

      --
      "The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
    13. Re:Gasp! by Naikrovek · · Score: 1

      since when do you have to view images on the web in a graphical browser?

      this images does not predate image viewers.

    14. Re:Gasp! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      About the browser support :
      Like others have written, you needed an external viewer (as you still need if you're using lynx)

      About the image itself :
      It seems that the original (gif ?) image has been recompressed into jpg, with the side effect of adding colors.

    15. Re:Gasp! by DarkMantle · · Score: 3, Informative

      this images does not predate image viewers.

      Exactly, the site says it was the first image ever clicked on. Not viewed inline.

      --
      DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
    16. Re:Gasp! by MoogMan · · Score: 1

      I think i'd rather Goatse, hehe...

    17. Re:Gasp! by sepluv · · Score: 1

      The first WWW browser, called WorldWideWeb, was graphical.

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
    18. Re:Gasp! by DarkMantle · · Score: 1

      It's bad when pointing out something in the article gets marked informitive. RTFA, C'mon, this is supposed to link you to NEWS if you don't read it it can't be news.

      --
      DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
  2. And the second image by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Funny

    Was those same women with their clothes off.

    1. Re:And the second image by Lisandro · · Score: 1

      I hate when someone beats me to a good joke *grrrr*

    2. Re:And the second image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn, you're like the 2nd post and you've expressed my sentiments exactly.

    3. Re:And the second image by Coneasfast · · Score: 1

      actually this is how the whole porn cult started.
      someone saw this a long time ago and thought to themself:

      "hmm, why not take this new so-called 'web-image' phenomena, and do something profitable with it, something that sells, and something that will never die, hmm..."

      --
      Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
    4. Re:And the second image by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ctually this is how the whole porn cult started.

      I can honestly say that within an hour or two of using Mosaic for the first time way back when (1992-93), starting with 'oh, you can click on some text and it will take you somewhere else?', I was browsing porn (at work, no less.)

    5. Re:And the second image by JPriest · · Score: 1

      Here is a direct link to the picture to save bandwidth.

      --
      Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
    6. Re:And the second image by Gromius · · Score: 5, Funny

      bet that would give somebody a hadron... /ducks

    7. Re:And the second image by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Funny
      > And the second image
      > Was those same women with their clothes off.

      Close, but not quite. It was those same women with their undergarments simultaneously teleported one foot to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy.

      Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for such a thing, partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties.

    8. Re:And the second image by beset · · Score: 1

      Closely followed by a little red cross.... damn it!

      --
      1) Clever Sig 2) ????? 3) Profit!
    9. Re:And the second image by RevDobbs · · Score: 1

      Yeah? How did you find that port?

    10. Re:And the second image by RevDobbs · · Score: 1

      Dammit. Let me correct that:

      How did you find that porn?

    11. Re:And the second image by Azadre · · Score: 0

      You've never gotten off to ASCII before, I am guessing?

    12. Re:And the second image by RevDobbs · · Score: 2, Funny

      Sure was... if they were using IE back in '92 ::snicker::

    13. Re:And the second image by magefile · · Score: 1

      And for once, it really was "for research purposes" ;-).

    14. Re:And the second image by drix · · Score: 3, Funny

      The porn finds you, silly. Honestly, how long have you been on this "Internet" thing? A day? ;)

      --

      I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
    15. Re:And the second image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Same here -- this guy comes over to my house and says "Hey there's a new way of getting porn where you don't have to run uudecode!!".

    16. Re:And the second image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thanks, Douglas Adams.

    17. Re:And the second image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, saving those 1508 bytes is a big help.

    18. Re:And the second image by Virtual+Karma · · Score: 0

      you mean the first image was not porn? thats disappointing man...

    19. Re:And the second image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Must be with popups.

    20. Re:And the second image by mo^ · · Score: 1

      not black and white 16 shade porn on the amiga then

      swapping them floppies was all i had

      --
      bah!*@%!
    21. Re:And the second image by mo^ · · Score: 1

      Douglas coming back to haunt /. sounds quite apt actually.

      --
      bah!*@%!
  3. Nothing to see here, move along by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Move along folks, its not pr0n. -a

    1. Re:Nothing to see here, move along by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Informative 5+

      Insightful 5+

    2. Re:Nothing to see here, move along by jacksonj04 · · Score: 1

      Well, it gave me a hadron!

      It's physics girls, it's 0053am, gimme a break...

      --
      How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
  4. Passed what??? by jdray · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...I was passing an historical milestone...

    Is that more painful than passing a kidney stone?

    --
    The Spoon
    Updated 6/28/2011
    1. Re:Passed what??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny


      But can the goatse guy pass himself? Welcome to the klein bottle version of goatse.

    2. Re:Passed what??? by albieomoss · · Score: 1

      no, kidney stones are passed out the urethra, this is definitely anal in nature

      --
      DankLogic - There is a system to everything.
  5. Old-skool by mboverload · · Score: 2, Funny

    I was tranfering pictures with fricken teletypes long before this.

    1. Re:Old-skool by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I was tranfering pictures with fricken teletypes long before this.

      Man. I remember those. We had a stash of them on the old PDP 11. Andy Capp, a shapely woman, some other cutesy stuff. Took ages to print on Model 43 TeleTypes, but they had the best quality print.

      They probably still reside somewhere on the internet.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    2. Re:Old-skool by nacturation · · Score: 1

      There's this: http://www.asciipr0n.com/. But I remember ones from before 1990 which you printed on a line printer and it used overtype to get a better resolution. These seem to be only for viewing on a monitor.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
    3. Re:Old-skool by Alien+Being · · Score: 4, Funny

      chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga zip
      chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga zip
      chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga zip
      ooh, yeah baby, that's it
      chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga zip
      chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga chugga zip
      a little more
      chugga chugga chugga chugga ding ding ding ding

    4. Re:Old-skool by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      Ugh. Remember downloading porn from BBS's? One... picture... at ... a ... time. Good thing I knew where my dad's stash was.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    5. Re:Old-skool by RollingThunder · · Score: 1

      I also remember people telling me "Yeah, there's this program like pkzip, but for images... stores them in 'jaypegs'. Takes a bit to uncompress them though."

      It sure did - I remember that XT chugging away, running jpg2gif on a ton of files.

  6. The web, then, as now. by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Funny

    One word: Cleavage

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    1. Re:The web, then, as now. by hashwolf · · Score: 1

      I did not see any cleavage there!

      --
      - "They misunderestimated me."
  7. Girl Band! by clean_stoner · · Score: 5, Funny

    A girl band singing about physics?! It's a nerd's dream come true.

    --

    Sigs are for the weak.

    1. Re:Girl Band! by Gromius · · Score: 5, Funny

      and I hear they have massive bosons too :)

    2. Re:Girl Band! by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny
      A girl band singing about physics?! It's a nerd's dream come true.

      The actually kinda remind me of the B-52's...

      radio shack is a little old place we can get together, radio shack, bayyy-beeee!

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    3. Re:Girl Band! by tweedlebait · · Score: 2, Interesting

      valence band? http://britneyspears.ac/physics/basics/basics.htm Yet the LHC girls are much cuter.

      --
      Firefox & /. ? Use this often:
    4. Re:Girl Band! by mobby_6kl · · Score: 1
      You can even sing yourself! Science songs and poems
      Example:

      MOMENTUM SONG
      tune: "London Bridge"

      Cart is going faster now, faster now, faster now,
      Cart is going faster now, more momentum.

      Mass has gotten larger now, larger now, larger now,
      Mass has gotten larger now, more momentum.

      Impulse equals F times t, F times t, F times t,
      Impulse equals F times t, that's an impulse.

      Impulse causes delta P, delta P, delta P
      Impulse causes delta P, more momentum.

      - by Jane and Jim Nelson
    5. Re:Girl Band! by Impeesa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As opposed to what, a physicist singing about physics?

    6. Re:Girl Band! by Alien+Being · · Score: 1

      "The actually kinda remind me of the B-52's..."

      4 brunettes instead of a blonde, a redhead and a gay guy. Get help!

    7. Re:Girl Band! by ScruffyScrode · · Score: 3, Funny

      A girl band singing about physics?! It's a nerd's dream come true.

      So you are telling us you had a nerdgasm?

    8. Re:Girl Band! by BorgHunter · · Score: 2, Funny

      That would be helpful in getting their phonon number. Oh wait, it's 0...

      --
      "Excuse me, did you say 'Trekker'? The word is 'Trekkie.' I should know; I created them." -- Gene Roddenberry
    9. Re:Girl Band! by ralphclark · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah but they're labelled W and Z and one is rumoured to be more massive than the other.

    10. Re:Girl Band! by clean_stoner · · Score: 1

      Holy crap, that rocks, I've never heard anyone else but my friends and I use the word "nerdgasm."

      --

      Sigs are for the weak.

  8. Alas by opusman · · Score: 2, Funny

    "How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever to be clicked on in a web browser!"

    The first picture on the web maybe, but only one of countless slashdotted sites.

  9. of course by circletimessquare · · Score: 4, Funny

    it's a no brainer that the first photo on the web is of seductively posed young women

    that's been the basis of the web ever since

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:of course by hugo_pt · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Are you saying the web is full of p0rn ? How dare you!!

    2. Re:of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it me, or are they holding and looking at those wire bundles as if it was a big dick they were about to slurp down?

    3. Re:of course by fyoder · · Score: 4, Funny
      I used to think that Tim Berners-Lee could never have anticipated that the web would become a major porn delivery system. Now I discover he started it.

      I had thought it was intended for physicists to use to share data. I suppose that could still be said to be true, and that it is just my assumptions about the nature of the data that were wrong.

      --
      Loose lips lose spit.
  10. Coral Cache Link... by openglx · · Score: 5, Informative
    1. Re:Coral Cache Link... by angryLNX · · Score: 1

      Ah thanks! I expect CERN to get slashdotted any minute now.

  11. ...and then, the unthinkable. by LakeSolon · · Score: 5, Funny

    And then it was posted to Slashdot. Well, it had a good run.

    ~Lake

    1. Re:...and then, the unthinkable. by CA_Jim · · Score: 4, Funny

      On the other hand, a picture of pretty women was posted on the web for 12 years before slashdot hit them. It makes you wonder if /. crowd is slowing down.

    2. Re:...and then, the unthinkable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On the other hand, a picture of pretty women was posted on the web for 12 years before slashdot hit them. It makes you wonder if /. crowd is slowing down.

      Dude, most on /. would hit anything female, 12 years ago or not.

  12. Already slashdotted by cshay · · Score: 1

    Mirrors?

    1. Re:Already slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      We slashdotted CERN? Holy mother of god, do you know what the size of their pipe is and the amount of computing power they have there? They are more or less the centre of GRID development, they routinely break file transfer rates records and they routinely transfer terrbytes of information accross the world to universities. Looks like distributed computing 0, distributed slashdoting 1

    2. Re:Already slashdotted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Coral Cache version is still going strong: Coral Cache Link

  13. By contrast... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    ...here is the last image published on the web.

  14. Are they still using the orginal server too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdotted with one post

  15. Slashdot server... by clean_stoner · · Score: 5, Funny

    slows to a halt as four thousand nerds all simultaneously click "Submit" on their joke about nerdy girls in a band.

    --

    Sigs are for the weak.

    1. Re:Slashdot server... by cybertears · · Score: 1

      you way underestimated the number of nerds clicking. Did you forget that it was Friday night?

  16. Sloooow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And of course, the picture is loading about as fast as it would have when the web was first invented.

    1. Re:Sloooow by bbc · · Score: 1

      "And of course, the picture is loading about as fast as it would have when the web was first invented."

      When the web was invented (only once, AFAIK), and pictures were shown inline in graphical web browsers, almost everybody was connected to the internet through their universities, where they had reasonably fast connections. I remember from those early days how I was swearing at the joker who had filled his page with 2MB worth of inline images, because even on my 75kbps connection it took ages to load.

      Of course, in the mid-nineties AOL got connected to the internet and the Netscape Navigator was introduced, so that unusable websites became the norm rather than the exception.

  17. I'd hit it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... then I'd mod it up.

  18. Teaser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Damn slashdot editors !!

    Rub it on by posting stories about geek girls on friday evening !!

    1. Re:Teaser by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Does this help? I'm engaged to a geek girl I met on a C Programming channel on IRC. :) And she cooks too!

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re:Teaser by wizbit · · Score: 1

      That must've been a fun courtship.

      "C'mon, baby, let me show you my pointer."

    3. Re:Teaser by cpghost · · Score: 4, Funny

      C'mon, baby, let me show you my pointer.

      Uh, that dangling pointer?

      /ducks :)

      --
      cpghost at Cordula's Web.
    4. Re:Teaser by Compact+Dick · · Score: 1

      Uh, that dangling pointer?

      I wish it was :-(

    5. Re:Teaser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      oops! CORE DUMP

  19. /.'ed by LqqkOut · · Score: 0
    Who would have guessed that the first image ever seen in a web broswer would be that of a broken img link...
    damn <img> tags!!
    --

    -- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!

  20. floating hand??? by sandmtyh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    who's floating hand is that on the red dress?

    1. Re:floating hand??? by openglx · · Score: 1

      I was wondering the same thing, until I realised that the first image on the web was "photoshopped".

    2. Re:floating hand??? by qwasty · · Score: 1

      the girl in the red dress is wearing a glove on her left hand and she's sort of "presenting" the band with her left hand.

    3. Re:floating hand??? by Basehart · · Score: 1

      This photo is a fake, shot in some backlot in Hollywood.

    4. Re:floating hand??? by Prophetic_Truth · · Score: 1

      it looks like her hand after right after a number 2 (back when the first images were posted to the WWW, they didn't have "TP")

      --
      time is a perception of a being's consciousness
      time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
    5. Re:floating hand??? by theTerribleRobbo · · Score: 2, Informative

      She has her left elbow close to her waist, and has her left hand turned outwards, you twit.

    6. Re:floating hand??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes she is wearing some glove thingy on the hand. I blame the shitty scanner and poor file formats in 1992 but oh well

    7. Re:floating hand??? by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

      I think something is wrong with the red dress girl. She doesn't have legs, either.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  21. WRONG, I pulled these archives of the first pic.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    I'm pretty sure 1983 is before 1992... :)
    First Pictures of the WWW

  22. What Kind Of Scanner... by norm1153 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...was available for Macs in '92? Color even?

    1. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by RatBastard · · Score: 4, Informative

      Welp, I had an Abaton 300 DPI SCSI scanner on my PC that was originally a Mac scanner. That was back in 1991 or 1992. Back when Everex (who owned Abaton) was still alive. It was a three-pass monstrosity that overheated on the third pass half the time, resulting in red streaks down the image.

      I remember selling scanners for Macs years before people on PCs were interested in them back in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

      --
      Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
    2. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe a little hand scanner. There reasonably cheap video frame grabbers too.

    3. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by javaxman · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Dude, it was 1992, not frickin' 1982... I was honestly shocked to hear an HTTP image wasn't transfered earlier. It must have been early in '92... I would have thought a black & white image would have been done first.

      What did you think those SCSI connectors were for ?

      There was a $500 or so color hand scanner, and apple sold a few scanners themselves, if I recall. Google for it if you're really curious.

      Still, an actual scanner was a rarity back in the day. I was always impressed that so many images were on Usenet...

    4. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by Loconut1389 · · Score: 1

      I had one of those handheld scanners, you rolled it across the page and the wheelie bar on it picked up the speed. I believe it came with OmniScan software, but I cant remember what brand the stupid thing was.. perhaps actually made by OmniScan.. IIRC it was gray.. It may have been a grayscale scanner, I can't seem to recall that either..

      Then i bought a scsci UMAX color flatbed for like $400 on sale open box ;o)

    5. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given that the Mac first came out in 1984 and was directly responsible for an imaging revolution in the printing and prepress industries, eight years down the road (1992) it was probably easier to get a good scanner, and a color one, on the Mac compared to any other platform. I know that you could get color Howtek scanners in 1992, and grayscale scanners were already down to about $1000 around that time.

    6. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by odin53 · · Score: 1

      Sure there were color scanners available for Macs and PCs in 1992. I was in highschool at the time; we were using Aldus Pagemaker to lay out the school newspaper, and we would scan pictures to place in the layout. The editor in chief had one of those handheld scanners, and the school had a flatbed, as did Kinko's.

    7. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by magefile · · Score: 1

      My school has a few of those (well, the new version, made by HP). They suck, and they've replaced the wheelie bar with accelerometers that break a *lot*.

    8. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We're talking about Macs. I know most of you back then were obsessed over DOS prompts and mocking the Mac desktop for not having a "real operating system," but meanwhile Mac users were busy scanning in color and pushing multimedia capabilities that wouldn't be available for years and years on the PC side. I remember playing Simcity 2000 with glorious wave synthesized music as my DOS using friends suffered through the FM versions.

      Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what Mac has done for two decades, and nobody makes fun of it anymore. Yes, there was color scanning in 1992 for Macs, and even earlier than that! I'm surprised people are...surprised.

    9. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "I would have thought a black & white image would have been done first."

      Eh, I'm not really so surprised. Before 92, in the BBS days, you could get color JPG's and Gifs. I understand your point that getting a color scan was harder, but my only real rebuttal to that is the technology was around before the WWW was.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    10. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by charlie_vernacular · · Score: 1

      According to my copy of Apple Design Apple introduced a scanner in June 1987. It was styled in the manner of the Macintosh II by frogdesign. I don't know if it was colour or black and white, though.

      Hope that helps

    11. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      ssh! you will give shock to x86 guys showing them what they missed in DOS days ;)

      but! my Amiga was 1.5x faster than Mac with same cpu in emulation. ;)

    12. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by bbc · · Score: 1

      I remember SCSI scanners from back then, which would connect to any modern computer of the day (provided they had a SCSI port).

      I even seem to remember hand-scanners for the C64.

      If the Mac was responsible for an imaging revolution, that must have been later. Adobe Photoshop was initially developed as a specialized tool to edit scanned images and was released in 1990.

      When the Commodore Amiga was launched in 1985, Andy Warhol made a painting of Debby Harry by feeding a video still into the Amiga and painting over it, so there were alternative technologies of getting real life images into microcomputers.

    13. Re:What Kind Of Scanner... by bbc · · Score: 1

      "Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what Mac has done for two decades"

      I think you were trying to say: Now, Linux and Windows busily try to clone what the Commodore Amiga did two decades ago. The Mac was an ugly little black and white bleep affair in the early days. Even the PC managed to get 16 colours on a screen. In those days, if you wanted a faster Mac, you had to run a Mac emulator on an Amiga. The only reason you would even want to go from 4096 colours to 2, and from 3 channel stereo sound to whatever bleeps the Mac could produce was because of the better productivity software in some areas.

  23. A mirror by James_G · · Score: 4, Informative
    1. Re:A mirror by Ingolfke · · Score: 1

      Thanks goodness this mirror was up an running to catch this moment in history!

  24. News for nerds by Azul · · Score: 2, Funny

    Stuff that matters, indeed.

    1. Re:News for nerds by Lisandro · · Score: 2, Funny

      Come on, have you seen the bands' lyrics?

      You poured liquid nitrogen down my spine
      as you told me you didn't love me any more
      and run off with the girl next door
      You poured liquid nitrogen in my heart
      and you told me it wouldn't hurt, what a liar
      You promised you'd always be true

      You said you'd be mine 12 months a year, 24 hours a day
      You said I'd be yours each week my dear, until the end of time
      But then you found her and you left me here
      To cry and to run of tears
      And now here I wait 12 months a year
      But I'm hoping one day you'll come back and stay


      You can almost hear the nerds orgasming at once while reading those.

    2. Re:News for nerds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meh, thats nothing.

      You said you'd be mine forever and ever, 5040 minutes a week
      Except Christmas Day 'cause you go see your mother
      (That's) 2800 less divided by 2
      You said I'd be yours 30,240,000 seconds a year
      Including leap years, which means 86,400 extra every four

      You poured...

      You said you'd be mine 3600 seconds an hour every day
      Which in milliseconds that's 43,200 times 10 to the 3rd
      You said I'd be yours 24 hours a day,
      integrating until the end of time.
      Now in nanoseconds that's just the square root
      of 2670 billion times 10 to 90 divided by two

    3. Re:News for nerds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of it's beyond satire and into pathos; take a look at My Sweetheart Is A Nobel Prize.

      My sweetheart's a Nobel Prize
      My sweetheart's so smart and wise
      My sweetheart is a Nobel Prize

      He says a lot of things that I dont' know,
      But I do know
      That I'll do anything he wants me to,
      'cause I do love him
      I don't understand
      The funny signs on his blackboard
      But when he holds my hand
      He takes me to the stars


      Nothing against sounding like a total bimbo, obviously, but if they're going to lay on the dribbling ignorance this thickly they might as well just go the whole hog and just go with dribbling vacantly into the microphone.

      Bah.

  25. Followed by.. by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Funny
    Was those same women with their clothes off.

    Followed by the first SpyWare...

    please tell us about your web surfing experience in an email, be sure to include anything you yourself have typed, such as credit card numbers, expiration dates, password, PIN numbers, and so on.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  26. Third image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Was a cat.

    1. Re:Third image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean a pussy?

  27. And it is loading like it did back then by DinZy · · Score: 1, Funny

    Is the speed intentional or has the site already been ./ed. It made me laugh either way

  28. Still being served from that FIRST Web Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Judging by the speed at which images load from this site, they still use that original server, and 56K leased line from 1992.

  29. New favorite band? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't heard their music yet, but deep down I've been wishing for someone to have a band that can sing poetically about things of this sort. Funny that it's been out there all along. I will also note that some old goa and psy trance tunes sample science shows, modem tones and technical stuff, but it's usually kind of sparse.

  30. MP3s by phaln · · Score: 1, Informative
    --
    SNACKS ARE AWESOME
    1. Re:MP3s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn these bitches can't sing... :\

  31. Torrent by TorrentNinja · · Score: 2, Informative

    On musiclub.web.cern.ch/musiclub/bands/cernettes/ there was a large 57MB Real Player RM file that will probably get /.'ed so I created a torrent. HERE is the TORRENT LHCLive.rm Peace

    1. Re:Torrent by TorrentNinja · · Score: 1

      Looks like this torrent is of three girls :) YEAH!

  32. Uhm, compression? by caryw · · Score: 1

    You'd think he would have compressed the jpeg a little better. An image like that shouldn't be 217k. With a "normal" jpeg compression algorithm the file is brought down to 65k with no loss in quality. Especially with the amazing 10BaseT and 2400 baud modem technology available in 1992!
    - Cary
    --Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

    1. Re:Uhm, compression? by sreid · · Score: 1

      but if you compress it any more all the cleavage will be gone!

    2. Re:Uhm, compression? by droopus · · Score: 1

      Nah, in 1992, I had already been on an HST 14.4 modem for a year (remember HST?) But you're right about the compression. 217k would have seemed enormous back then.

      I mean, we had just been told by the ubergeek (ptui) that we didn't ever need more than 640k...use a third of that for one image? Nah.

      Jeebus, we're talking about this like it was 50 years ago. B)

      "Luxury! When I was a lad we lived in a lake!"

      --
      "The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
    3. Re:Uhm, compression? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and we were only a year or two away from the first cable modem trials. It wasn't pretty, but broadband had (sorta) arrived.

    4. Re:Uhm, compression? by Alien+Being · · Score: 1

      "remember HST?"

      Nah, Telebit Worldblazers with Turbo PEP!

    5. Re:Uhm, compression? by azaris · · Score: 1

      Nah, in 1992, I had already been on an HST 14.4 modem for a year (remember HST?) But you're right about the compression. 217k would have seemed enormous back then.

      Not really, roughly two minutes worth of downloading.

      I mean, we had just been told by the ubergeek (ptui) that we didn't ever need more than 640k...use a third of that for one image? Nah.

      "Just"? That was in 1981. You seriously need to retune your memory chip. By 1992 PCs had 8-16 MB of RAM.

  33. BOOOOOOOOO!!!! by RatBastard · · Score: 1, Funny

    That was terrible. And I'm mad that you beat me to it.

    --
    Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
    1. Re:BOOOOOOOOO!!!! by schnits0r · · Score: 1

      HE really was a Rat Bastard, wasn't he?

      ~rimshot~
      I'll be here all night!

    2. Re:BOOOOOOOOO!!!! by tehshen · · Score: 1

      You've got to be quark^H^H^H^H^Hquick!

      --
      Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
    3. Re:BOOOOOOOOO!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He beat you at your hadron?

  34. That's just SICK!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wish you'd quit that and go back to posting Goatse. This is just patently offensive.

  35. Re:WRONG, I pulled these archives of the first pic by EmptyBuffalo · · Score: 1

    But when were those photos of BG posted to the www? I've got photos of my great grandparents from 18xx but they weren't on the web before 1992.

    --
    cat life | grep joy >> memory
  36. Re:WRONG, I pulled these archives of the first pic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Internet != WWW.

  37. Typical /. late coverage by Piquan · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, this information was known for what, 12 years?

    1. Re:Typical /. late coverage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just wait -- it'll be on /. again in a day or two. ;)

    2. Re:Typical /. late coverage by rob_squared · · Score: 1

      Yes, exactly, 105-92=12.

      --
      I don't get it.
  38. particular matters by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hardonic Festival? So the Web was actually produced for porn, and all this physics crap clogging it up is just scientists getting a free ride.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:particular matters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The parent is the funniest email I've seen on /. in a while. Please mod parent up!

  39. Website not moved on much since... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems that the band which was pictured in that original photo is still together, and they still have a website, and it's not that much different from those first days.

    You'd think they would have improved it by now!

  40. img tags didn't exist then by dananderson · · Score: 4, Informative
    1. Re:img tags didn't exist then by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Tim Berners-Lee spoke out against the img tag when it was first created, because it broke backwards compatibility. The correct implementation, he argued, would have put the alt text between and tags, so that browsers that didn't understand the tag would get the alternate text automatically, while browsers that did could hide the text (or display it as a tool tip or something).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:img tags didn't exist then by sepluv · · Score: 3, Informative
      I'm glad to hear that. This is the obvious way of doing it, and I couldn't think why on earth he didn't do it that way.

      That's how it is in XHTML 2.0 anyway, so he's got his way now.

      --
      Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
      [This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
  41. Developing Web Browsers by n0dalus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Surely the first image to appear in a web browser was one during the development of the browser. You don't just chuck in some code and wait for your users to tell you if it loads images or not. Images would have been one of the first things tested.
    Even the standards for displaying the images were thought up and hopefully tested long before the first image compatable web browser was made.

    1. Re:Developing Web Browsers by supercowpowers · · Score: 1
      Splitting grammatical hairs here, but sayeth the informational blurb:
      How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever <em>to be clicked on</em> in a web browser!"
      It would be silly to make a point of clicking on the picture after it's loaded, and I'm assuming thumbnails were unnecessary, so it's possible that the user simply downloaded the file through the browser, and viewed it externally?

      Then after they got the bright idea that you could send pictures over tcp/ip! (duh), support was built into browsers later?

      Just a thought...
      --
      Nyntändo-Schock!
    2. Re:Developing Web Browsers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, technically you can't click on the picture before it's loaded, you might click on a link pointing to the picture though.

    3. Re:Developing Web Browsers by tagish · · Score: 1

      1) The picture wasn't necessarily displayed in the browser
      2) TBL was developing the browser himself so maybe he asked for the image /to use/ as test data.

      --
      Andy Armstrong
  42. Eh, they suck. by InThane · · Score: 2, Funny

    Their home page uses the blink tag, what more proof do you need?

    --
    InThane
  43. Translation Available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't speak French, but I think I have this one covered:

    Les Horribles Cernettes == Frickin' Easy Earth Girls!

  44. "The most beautiful women in the world are to be found in Geneva (and Lausanne)"

    J.-L. Godard

    --
    This is...

    O
    U
    T
    R
    A
    G
    E
    O
    U
    S

    !

    1. Re:Heh. by e2ka · · Score: 1

      I lived there for a year. That's not true.

    2. Re:Heh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol, me too. certainly not true.

  45. I am using Lynx, you... by melikamp · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am using Lynx, you insensitive clod!

    1. Re:I am using Lynx, you... by Urger · · Score: 1

      Well, I hope you recover then

    2. Re:I am using Lynx, you... by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's the ascii version:

      /O\ /O\
      -|---|--
      / \ / \

    3. Re:I am using Lynx, you... by m50d · · Score: 1

      Believe it or not, I posted this in links, and I recommend it. Means you don't get any annoying flash ads

      --
      I am trolling
    4. Re:I am using Lynx, you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am *STILL* using Lynx, you you insensitive clod!

  46. Microsoft strikes back? by Primal_theory · · Score: 1

    Do you need a drm thingie to view it?

    --
    Your skill in reading has increased by one point!
  47. Figures by Daath · · Score: 1

    It was women.

    The year after, when I started studying CS at the university of Copenhagen, the net was already awash with porn (ok, slightly exaggerated, but it was there and easy to find)...
    Not very good quality, resolution-wise, but we got the general idea ;)

    --
    Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
  48. Wow by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

    That is a lame picture.

    To think that a medium that bolstered the US (and World) Economy via the "dotcom boom" and still generates billions of dollars a year for the pr0n industry would have started out with the transmission of such a stupid picture restores my hope for the future.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  49. OMG! by asdfasdfasdfasdf · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd Hit it!!!

    Oh, wait. Crap. Wrong website.

    1. Re:OMG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I for one would definitely NOT hit it. I mean look at those sharp knees. Way below my standards.

  50. How did Tim get his last name? by bergeron76 · · Score: 1

    Did he work something out with his wife so she could keep hers?

    Seriously, I've heard of women keeping Maiden names, but not men. I doubt it's a Maiden name thing, but I'm just curious how he got a hyphenated last name.

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
    1. Re:How did Tim get his last name? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      His ancestry includes at least two pretentious people.

    2. Re:How did Tim get his last name? by nagora · · Score: 1
      Did he work something out with his wife so she could keep hers?

      In ye olden days an heiress (usually an only surviving child who happened to be a woman) would carry on the family name by splicing it with her husband's. This is also reflected in heraldry and is the origin of many quartered and "per pale" coats of arms where the two coats were combined.

      Presumably, TBL is decended from one of these families.

      TWW

      --
      "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
    3. Re:How did Tim get his last name? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Seriously, I've heard of women keeping Maiden names, but not men. I doubt it's a Maiden name thing, but I'm just curious how he got a hyphenated last name.

      Well, it has been done. And the word that I've heard is that the law has a very large double standard for men and women in this regard. If a woman goes to the DMV and says she wants to change her last name on her driver's license because she got married, it's no problemo. But if a guy does the exact same thing (even if he's just tacking another name on the end, which would be a less severe change than what most women do), then they think he's nuts and refuse to do it without a huge amount of bureaucracy.

      By the way the guy who posted (on a Usenet group I read) that he'd done that said it was not because he was a rabid equal rights person but just because he felt it was a nice way to show respect to his new wife, his desire to be part of her life, etc., etc.

      But, you know, no good deed will go unpunished, etc., etc.

    4. Re:How did Tim get his last name? by Hank+Chinaski · · Score: 1

      in most european countries you can choose:
      take wifes name
      take grooms name
      take wife+grooms name for groom, wife keeps her maiden name
      take wife+grooms name for wife, groom keeps his name
      both take wife+grooms name

      --
      IAAL
    5. Re:How did Tim get his last name? by nagora · · Score: 1
      in most european countries

      However, Tim is British and most of the options you list are very very rare here.

      TWW

      --
      "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  51. over hyped by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i find it disturbing that one man is atributed with the invention of the www. He didnt create it's basis
    He didnt invent html he didnt create the first browser.
    From the information i gatherd he got some payed time of of his day job to help on a project that was started by someone else...

    But i guess i would like the second one on the right if she got her chin reduced a bit in size

  52. I swear that's what I read! by NoData · · Score: 3, Funny

    AWWW. Damn you. I actually did misread the caption, which in actuality reads:

    Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of "the CERN girls" to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the "World Wide Web". ...

    CERN Hard-onic festival?! Wha wha wha?!!!! I thought they were Swiss not Swedes...

    But damn. The second one from the left..niiiice. Got that Susanna Hoffs thang going on.

    1. Re:I swear that's what I read! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The second one from the left is Silvano's wife.

    2. Re:I swear that's what I read! by NoData · · Score: 1

      The second one from the left is Silvano's wife.

      D'OH!

  53. Re:Second image by __aamcgs2220 · · Score: 1

    Yeah, that Darl McBride guy has sure changed since then...

  54. Bumbums by dauthur · · Score: 1

    But I thought Mr. Goatse was the first to grace the internet with his gaping hilarity?

  55. Re:WRONG, I pulled these archives of the first pic by MatthewNewberg · · Score: 1

    Before trying to look smart, look at the pictures.

  56. A different world! by Gil-galad55 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I worked at CERN a couple of summers ago and saw the Cernettes and other physicsfolken band play at the Hardronic festival. I have to say, it's an otherworldly experience. CERN is one of those weird meshing places where there's an overload of talent. You'll walk out of a lecture on the Standard Model and hear someone in the next room roaring through a Beethoven sonata, or pass by the terrace and see the old hands of particle physics, maybe even a Nobel laureate, chucking around a frisbee. I found it extremely inspiring.

    --

    To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)

    1. Re:A different world! by agraboso · · Score: 1

      I was at 2002 Hardronic Festival but somehow miss their performance... :((

    2. Re:A different world! by hermitian · · Score: 1

      Are you telling me that treading the hallowed halls of Kinard Lab didn't make you feel extremely inspired?

    3. Re:A different world! by Gil-galad55 · · Score: 1

      It made me feel extremely something! ;) And Kinard had chalk darts going for it...

      --

      To follow knowledge like a sinking star, / Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. ("Ulysses", Tennyson)

  57. Teaser all right... by TiggertheMad · · Score: 1

    Does this help? I'm engaged to a geek girl I met on a C Programming channel on IRC. :) And she cooks too!

    Oh, sweet jesus this guy is springer fodder.

    Ummmm...yeah, if 'she' asks you to meet 'her' for the first time late at night at some sleazy motel off the turnpike, for the LOVE OF GOD, man, don't go.

    --

    HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
    1. Re:Teaser all right... by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Oh she's definitely female seeing as we've been living together for years. I wouldn't marry someone I never met in person, that's just crazy.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  58. O_o by Deiouss · · Score: 0

    Is it just me or do they look as far from a nerdy rock group band you can get? I wouldn't be surprised to see them singing gospel for a southern baptist church.

  59. This has to be fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
    "You are looking at the VERY FIRST photo ever published on the web!"

    Except that "very first photo" is called "LHC5.jpg". No web browser supported jpeg format until Netscape.

    I call shenanigans.

    1. Re:This has to be fake by bonch · · Score: 1

      Maybe it was originally a BMP, and has been converted to JPG for the purposes of displaying on that "page of history."

    2. Re:This has to be fake by firew0lfz · · Score: 1

      I was wondering about that. When *did* jpg come out?

      Or could it be that for all intents and purposes that was the first image, just in JPEG format?

      --
      Try not to let life get in the way of living.
    3. Re:This has to be fake by plcurechax · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually all the early browsers didn't have inline attachment support. They either dumped it to a file (Save As...) or based on the MIME type (graphics/jpeg) they would launch an external application like xv.

    4. Re:This has to be fake by Anthony+Boyd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You are right, that probably isn't the actual, exact file that appeared. However, look at the skin of the women: grainy, dithered. Look at the colors of their dresses: large swaths of flat color. In other words, it appears that it was a 256 color GIF at some point, and then was converted to JPEG. Now, it still could be fake on a grander scale, such as perhaps the first photo on the Web was not in fact a photo of the LHC girls. I don't know. But at the very least, this JPEG appears to be crappy enough that it's plausibe it used to be an old-skool GIF. Old browsers could display GIFs.

    5. Re:This has to be fake by ksheff · · Score: 1

      That's when you had the browser set up to launch xv or some other image display program when you clicked on an image. No one ever said it had to be displayed natively by the browser. Just published on the web.

      --
      the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
    6. Re:This has to be fake by Rie+Beam · · Score: 1

      They said the picture was one of the first. Maybe it's the same picture, just a different compression scheme (since whatever they were using then is probably outdated, or too large for the "modern internet")?

    7. Re:This has to be fake by russellh · · Score: 1

      recompressed do to the gif patent issue, perhaps?

      --
      must... stay... awake...
    8. Re:This has to be fake by node+3 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The first web browser was on NEXTSTEP (now called OS X), which supported jpeg natively. If you support images at all using NEXSTEP's built-in objects (I assume it was NSImage then as now), you automatically get jpeg support. You'd have to pretty much have some reason not to show jpegs if you weren't going to include support for them, unlike Netscape (nee Mosaic) where the developers had to add in all the formats you wanted individually (graphics format support wasn't all that advanced back then under most Unices, as Rasterman wouldn't start on imlib for about 4-5 years).

    9. Re:This has to be fake by loconet · · Score: 2, Interesting

      loconet ~ $> lynx --dump 'http://musiclub.web.cern.ch/MusiClub/bands/cernet tes/pictures/LHC5.jpg' | strings | more
      JFIF
      Photoshop 3.0
      8BIM
      8BIM
      8BIM
      8BIM'
      8BIM
      8BIM
      8BIM
      Ad obe

      Looks like this one file was created using Photoshop 3.0 which released back in 1994. So it is either fake or resaved at around that time.

      --
      [alk]
    10. Re:This has to be fake by arose · · Score: 1
      Seems so, from a Wired article:
      When Tim Berners-Lee was writing the software to serve GIF files, he asked co-worker Silvano de Gennaro for a few pictures of the singers. One of the band photos was among the first five pictures published on the Web.
      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
    11. Re:This has to be fake by Inaffect · · Score: 1

      That copy of Photoshop was being used at the lab in 92 after they discovered time travel

    12. Re:This has to be fake by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Funny

      The first web browser was on NEXTSTEP...

      No, it was on NeXTStep. Capitalisation is meaningful here, as NEXTSTEP was the name given to the system only after NeXT hardware was abandoned. Berners-Lee did all his work on NeXT hardware, in the NeXTStep days. See ObjectFarm's OpenStep Confusion.

    13. Re:This has to be fake by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      Wonders, should I believe to AC or CERN and Tim Berners Lee?

      You know the NeXT? It supported jpeg natively aside from browser coded on it.

    14. Re:This has to be fake by kobotronic · · Score: 1

      The image was definitely originally a GIF, evident from the dithering and banding artefacts.

      JPEG macroblocks and artefacts were pretty obvious on the lo-res CRTs used at the time, so GIF was favored as the 'sharp' format used for illustrations and things not needing a lot of colors. Really not all that different from today's situation 15 years later.

      JPEG = pr0n was pretty much the going assumption at the time, however, and GIF was almost 5 years old, well known from Compuserve and had a slightly better reputation at the time TBL was futzing with his novel web surfing thing which may have been the reason they focused on that format.

      Another important issue was limited true color support on 8-bit terminals used on universities at the time (truecolor not common until several more years in the future)

      The first several years I only saw NCSA MOSAIC in 8-bit with lots of dithering on JPEGs. I hated the X terminal way of handling 8-bit dithering with windows flickering in abnormal random colors when the mouse cursor hovered over them.

      However, if you had a page with just one graphic with 128 colors or less, Mosaic had a way to adapt the application palette to match the image so it looked fine without dithering.

    15. Re:This has to be fake by node+3 · · Score: 1

      No, it was on NeXTStep. Capitalisation is meaningful here

      It is meaningful, which is why I used NEXTSTEP, as NEXTSTEP is the standard capitalization used when referring to NEXTSTEP in general, since it was the last capitalization scheme. Just like you might say the Romans did such-and-such in Istanbul, or the Dutch founded New York, or some unknown people left strange heads on Easter Island.

    16. Re:This has to be fake by CRCulver · · Score: 1

      What nonsense, just admit your usage was wrong.

    17. Re:This has to be fake by rthille · · Score: 1

      Actually, depending on which version of NeXTStep Tim was using, NXImage didn't exist, and the object for images was the 'Bitmap'. NXImage wasn't introduced until later, and while the original object supported TIFF, it didn't support JPEG format data within the TIFF files, nor JFIF (.jpg) files.

      --
      Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
    18. Re:This has to be fake by node+3 · · Score: 1

      What nonsense, just admit your usage was wrong.

      Yeah, except that my usage wasn't wrong. The two capitalizations aren't mutually exclusive, like you claim. When used specifically, "NEXTSTEP" refers to NeXT's complete OS on non-NeXT hardware. Used generically (which is what I was doing), it refers to all the various concoctions of NeXTStep, the frameworks, the objects, the bundled apps, etc., pre-OS X (and sometimes it even refers to OS X, but that's not commonplace).

      You're right that the web wasn't developed on NEXTSTEP in the specific sense, but it certainly was developed on NEXTSTEP in the generic sense. NeXTSTEP is also used generically.

      Sometimes precision is useful, sometimes it's superfluous, but imprecision isn't the same as "wrong". In my case, I was never claiming to be precise. If I had, I would have been wrong. I chose "NEXTSTEP" specifically because I didn't know the details (I didn't know the differences between the various capitalizations, but I did know that "NEXTSTEP" was commonly used to refer to them all).

      If you don't know the distinction, then you'll have problems with these sentences too:

      "Man discovered the nature of radioactivity during the 1800's."

      "The population of NYC is 8 million."

      "Unknown people left large stone heads on Easter Island."

      All are correct, but imprecise. Sometimes a context calls for precision, sometimes it doesn't. Nonsense is not knowing the difference.

    19. Re:This has to be fake by node+3 · · Score: 1

      NeXTStep, in 1991 (according to an old NeXT brochure I have), supported jpeg. I don't know if that was in NXImage or only on an app-by-app basis, but it would seem odd to me if they took the effort to include it in some programs, but not in NXImage itself (not that being odd makes it impossible or anything!).

    20. Re:This has to be fake by rthille · · Score: 1

      Certainly possible. I was going by memory and while I'm sure about the 'Bitmap' and NXImage classes, I have a lousy memory for timelines...

      --
      Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
  60. Torrent by TorrentNinja · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here is a torrent of the Geek Girls :P

    Geek Girls

    Peace

  61. No wonder... by PHanT0 · · Score: 1


    With such *hot* girl geeks, it's no wonder it never took that long for porn to be available on the web.

  62. Obligatory cheap-shot by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

    No it wasn't and don't call me Shirley.

    --
    Good, inexpensive web hosting
  63. So, one has to ask... by ProdigySim · · Score: 1

    ...What was the first site ever to be Slashdotted?

  64. First pr0n joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shortly there after Berners-Lee was reported to have exclaimed, "Hand Check!"

  65. porn on the net by Jafa · · Score: 1

    The net had been awash with porn for years, on usenet. I think it took another week after this photo was up on the web that the web was awash with porn.

    J

  66. DUPE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You were beat to the punch, my friend. Your joke's a blatant dupe.

    1. Re:DUPE by blue+trane · · Score: 1

      beat, heheh

  67. 7-up man rules. by Caesar · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure the dancing 7-Up guy was first. Either that, or the letter that mails itself. Two. Amazing. Classics. ;)

  68. Obligatory by MagicDude · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd hit it....


    Wait, isn't this Fark?

  69. Les Horribles Cernettes .... ? by ggvaidya · · Score: 5, Funny

    Was anybody else even slightly scared that they were going to get Goatse?

    (oh: sweet open-sourced information! Get some while it lasts!)

    1. Re:Les Horribles Cernettes .... ? by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Was anybody else even slightly scared that they were going to get Goatse?

      Every last goddam slashdot-posted link gives me that feeling. It's geek fear level is right up there with outsourcing, man.

    2. Re:Les Horribles Cernettes .... ? by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      I just imagined Tim Berners Lee invented the Goatse too! His evil secret personality like Mr. Hyde

    3. Re:Les Horribles Cernettes .... ? by srmalloy · · Score: 1
      Was anybody else even slightly scared that they were going to get Goatse?

      Oh, come on... It was the first picture posted to the Web; it would have taken at least an hour for someone to come up with the idea of setting up a site to be used for linkforging non-work-safe images to burn people's eyes out... And even longer for the domain-name standards to be in place so that the .cx domain was there to make the hostname pun work.

  70. I'd hit it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Provided a new heavy isotope of the beer atom is produced in significant quantities....

  71. Oh, come on! by bonch · · Score: 1, Funny

    Congratulations on one of the lamest attempts at hitting all the Slashdot talking points for karma whoring purposes. "Uh, see, this is the first image on the web, so for some reason it's a copyright violation, and somehow that ties into P2P networks, and the RIAA is evil if they're gonna try to ban that and control music and the whole web and I AM NOT A ROBOT!!"

    You fail it.

    1. Re:Oh, come on! by enosys · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, he failed because he forgot to mention SCO

  72. BWAHAHAHA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like you and I had a similar 1993.

  73. Obligatory Fark reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd hit it, and then I'd run a trace route.

  74. I think what we should REALLY be asking is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are you such an idiot?

  75. the technology... by vigyanik · · Score: 1

    ... that gave birth to a whole new way of disseminating porn.

  76. that page by vigyanik · · Score: 1

    is an authentic reproduction of the page that carried the first internet photograph. Even the load times are the same!

  77. Nah, construction worker rules supreme by ZehFernando · · Score: 1

    That self mailing e letter was a classic, but the construction worker sign - the one with an stickman digging holes on the ground - would be #1 for me.

  78. "Les Horribles Cernettes" tidbits by dantheman82 · · Score: 2, Informative

    A few notes on how the band started:
    The group -- which bills itself as "the one and only High Energy Rock Band" -- formed in 1990 when a secretary at CERN complained that her physicist boyfriend spent his nights and weekends smashing protons in an underground collider. She confessed her woes to friend and computer scientist at the laboratory, Silvano de Gennaro, who wrote a song about her plight.

    From that episode, "Collider" was born:

    I gave you a golden ring to show you my love
    You went to stick it in a printed circuit
    To fix a voltage leak in your collector
    You plug my feelings into your detector
    You never spend your nights with me
    You don't go out with other girls either
    You prefer your collider
    You only love your collider
    Your collider.

    Other songs:
    "Surfing on the Web" (Surf me on the Web/ My page is all for you/ Call me on the Web/ I'll open my windows to you), "Strong Interaction" (You quark me up/ You quark me down/ You quark me top/ You quark me bottom), and "Computer Games" (Since you've gone away/ I've got a million games to play/ I've got your 80 megabytes full of computer games)

    An interesting start to downloading of pictures on the web...

    --
    This sig donated to Pater. Long live /.
  79. Reminds me of the first picture I downloaded by Orion+Blastar · · Score: 1

    on my Amiga 1000 from a BBS. It was in 4096 color HAM mode, at a time when EGA was standard on PCs and the Mac only did Black and White.

    Yes it was of a woman.

    I showed it to a friend of mine, and all he could say was "yeah but it doesn't move", and went back to using his Hercules based AT clone with the monocrome monitor and downloading MacPaint images in black and white using some DOS reader to view them, having to scroll up and down to look at dithered women.

    I think after that, someone got the idea to create animated files of women and post them to BBSes or the Internet.

    It was unusual, there it was, magazine quality image of a woman, and all he could say was that it didn't move. Something his computer could not display, ah well.

    The woman in the Amiga picture was in her underware, IIRC, but had good skin tones.

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    Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
    1. Re:Reminds me of the first picture I downloaded by omahajim · · Score: 1
      The woman in the Amiga picture was in her underware

      Is that anything like Middleware or Vaporware?

    2. Re:Reminds me of the first picture I downloaded by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, truly software

    3. Re:Reminds me of the first picture I downloaded by An+ominous+Cow+art · · Score: 1

      UnderWare developed the Brief editor, if I recall correctly. Back in the day I loved that editor even more then emacs...

  80. saw them that summer, digitally enhanced breasts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I remember seeing them perform at CERN during that summer. Their tunes included "Daddy's Lab", "My sweetheart is a Nobel prize", and "Microwave love". I also remember that in a promotional photo, the boyfriend of one of the members digitally enhanced her breasts. The alteration was removed (after she heard about it, I believe).

  81. Hot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But these are french women, so they got small tits.
    The second one from the left looks hot, though...

  82. Long time by Stenson · · Score: 1

    Does it not say something about slashdot that the first image on the web was a bunch of chicks and we're only finding out about it in 2005.

    I guess that's pretty much the sketch for most folk here :)

  83. Classic by POLAX · · Score: 1

    Judging from the time it took to load the page apparently they're using the same server they had in 1992...

  84. Re:Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    105% OPEN SOURCE!

  85. Hold on a second by cspring007 · · Score: 1

    Al Gore invented the internet.

  86. You haven't heard their music by me+at+werk · · Score: 1

    Computer Games - Les Horribles Cernettes

    The first band on the web shares their songs freely in mp3 format, with no DRM. Look how far we've come... sigh.

    --
    For context, click Parent.
  87. That's what pr0n looked like back then by melted · · Score: 1

    That's what pr0n looked like back then. It is widely known that the Internets were invented to transfer pr0n.

  88. On a 2400 Baud Modem? by neckdeepinspecialsau · · Score: 1
    Hmmmm 2400 Baud Modem + 220k image = something like a lifetime downloading the damn image!

    Either there is some poor joe still downloading this foolish thing or we are the first people to see it.

  89. What are the chances that CERN needs a mirror? by antispam_ben · · Score: 1

    Just wondering, but as The True Origin of The WWW, I suspect they have enough bandwidrh to handle being the subject of a Slashdot article.

    --
    Tag lost or not installed.
  90. Not really.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you hit it at a good fraction of light speed.

  91. Chocolate... by abaynes · · Score: 1

    Why's that lady-on-the-far-right's hand dipped in chocolate?

    --
    - A R T
  92. This picture was, of course, taken by... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Al Gore.

  93. Re:First Image on the web sure. by coopaq · · Score: 0
    What the hell? What happened to goatse being funny? Oh man!!!

    FCC made it here already?

    All I know is when Clinton was president goatse was FUNNY!

  94. HOAX! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Delete this topic off Slashdot, it's as accurate as the New York Times.

  95. There's no slashdotting at CERN by LupeSpywalper · · Score: 0

    At a certain load level their web server traffic is routed into an enormous proton accelerator where all the requests go into an infinite loop until they collide and create odd shapes

  96. BBC Images Were More Impressive by superultra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember back in the day when people collected images for the mere sake that it looked cool to have a semi-recognizable picture on a computer screen. I can clearly recall calling my parents from the other room to look at Captain Kirk in EGA color and them not being at all as impressed as I was. Or when VGA hit, balloons, and those images of the rose, the clown, and that girl with the hot lips were on every single floppy shareware disc.

    Those were weird times. Downloading images from BBS's merely because it was cool to have your monitor display images.

    Has anyone ever come across an archive of those old BBS EGA/VGA images?

    1. Re:BBC Images Were More Impressive by kobotronic · · Score: 2, Informative

      I know what you mean. Golden times.
      Also there were many images converted from the nice Deluxe Paint IFF images on the Amiga.

      A few sites on the net appears to collect these old files. I have a modest archive with the entire contents of some BBS image folders from 1989 to 1990. Try searching for yrose.gif, clown.gif, cheetah.gif, mouse.gif - they sometimes yield a cache of these things.

      http://www-vms.uoregon.edu/~sergiok/GIFS/

      There's one...

    2. Re:BBC Images Were More Impressive by madaxe42 · · Score: 1

      Good times indeed... I remember being amazed by the 3d fill on delux paint 3 - and the ability to cycle through colours - it was flabbergastingly cool.

    3. Re:BBC Images Were More Impressive by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Our BBS is still up and running, you insensitive clod! :)

      Earthquake City BBS, (818) 368-3337. Don't everyone call at once, there's only two lines. :)

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  97. Even late for the 10th anniv. by Tavor · · Score: 0

    I mean, cmon! Don't you people have calenders? Ten years ago wasn't that long ago. If you expand that to 15, such events as the fall of the Soviet Union, the Wall coming down, the Burning of the NeXTCube*, The Browser Wars... the list goes on. Wake up, Slashdot!

    *http://www.simson.net/photos/hacks/cubefire.htm l

    --
    Windows has detected an undetectable error.
  98. 13 years of the web. . ? by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 1
    Man. The high, high-speed of tech development sure seems pretty normal when you're in the middle of it.

    Three-thousand years of steppe farming and then WHAM, Steam Engines. Nukes. Donkey Kong. (The atom bomb pre-dates Mario. Think about that.)

    So pardon me while I pause to reflect on this. Strangely, I find the awe with it all only registers on the intellectual level. The actual, "Wow!" factor feels kind of dead in the water. That's the part which impresses me. Humans adapt to new stuff really well. When the shit hits the fan, I bet there won't be badly dubbed Japanese crowds running amok in the street.


    -FL

  99. Obviously before jpeg optimization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    448k for a stupid pic to load on that page. Obviously predates compression

  100. I'd hit it by StormyWeather · · Score: 2, Funny

    with my supercollider.

  101. more funny geeky band names from CERN! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://musiclub.web.cern.ch/musiclub/rock.html

  102. (fachidot == nerd) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    n/t

  103. Yeah.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ..it's hard to beat the Monkey.. =)

  104. So where's the HTML page it's linked from? by tentimestwenty · · Score: 1

    I was trading files with my friends with a 1200 baud modem and a Mac SE/30 back in '89. That doesn't count. Certainly the "first image" would have had to been linked off a page for it to qualify. Where's the page?

  105. Mosaid != first graphical browser (was Re:Gasp!) by WillAdams · · Score: 1

    NeXTstep's worldwideweb.app could display _anything_ which one's NeXT system was set up to display and thanks to the magic of Filter Services, .jpg support was trivial.

    William
    (who still hasn't updated his personal web site to xhtml and css so that he can view it from his Cube)

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  106. Aren't they supposed to be nekkid? by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 1

    I thought pr0n was what made the internet so popular?

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    Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
  107. Big Lie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not the first. We had newsfeeds that graced the web long before CERN copied what we already had. It may be the first picture under his protocol but surely not the first on the web.

  108. It figures =P by Stopher2475 · · Score: 0

    Of course, the first picture on the internet had to be a bunch of cute chicks showing cleavage.

  109. No surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    First web image. A bunch of babes. Might've known. First image I clicked on was probably a bunch of babes too.