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The First Image Published on the Web

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-than-barbie-and-the-rockers dept.

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.""

50 of 283 comments (clear)

  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 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 :-)

    3. 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
    4. 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.

    5. Re:Gasp! by rk · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    6. 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 :)

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    7. 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.
  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 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.)

    2. Re:And the second image by Gromius · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    3. 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.

    4. 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.
    5. 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!!".

  3. 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
  4. The web, then, as now. by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 5, Funny

    One word: Cleavage

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
  5. 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 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?

  6. 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 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.
  7. Coral Cache Link... by openglx · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://musiclub.web.cern.ch.nyud.net:8090/MusiClub /bands/cernettes/firstband.html

  8. ...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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

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

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

  12. 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 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...

  13. A mirror by James_G · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mirror here.

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

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

  15. img tags didn't exist then by dananderson · · Score: 4, Informative
    img tags didn't exist in '92. They came later with Mosaic. It was probably an anchor () tag that was required.

    Mosaic didn't support JPG initially either--just GIF and some obscure X bitmap file (xbm?). JPG support came later with Netscape and latter versions of Mosaic.
    1. 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]
  16. 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.

  17. 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 Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's the ascii version:

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

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  18. OMG! by asdfasdfasdfasdf · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd Hit it!!!

    Oh, wait. Crap. Wrong website.

  19. 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.

  20. 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)

  21. 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.
  22. 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 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.

    2. 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.

      --
      My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
    3. 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).

  23. 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

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

    I'd hit it....


    Wait, isn't this Fark?

  25. 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!)

  26. 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?