The open web was 25-years-young on Wednesday - and it’s amazing just how much has changed in the last quarter of a century.
To celebrate the web’s birthday we asked you to tell us about your first impressions of the internet. From dial up to the thrill of logging in to your first chatroom, some of your memories from the web’s infant years are very different from what we expect from it today. Here are 25 things you may have forgotten about the internet:
1. The screech of the modem
Remember when you had to listen to this before you could check your email?
Video suggested by benthom99. There were few things more terrifying than picking up your phone and hearing SKREEEEEEEEEE down the receiver. Speaking of...
2. Having to disconnect so your mum/dad/cat could make a phonecall
Hell hath no fury like parents who just found out you sneaked on to the computer to play some 8-bit game. We certainly don’t miss arguing with siblings about whose turn it is to go on the computer next.
3. Websites looked a bit rubbish
AdaminTurkey submitted this old-school screenshot of Google from around 1997.
Google, circa 1997
Google as it looked in 1997, two years before I heard of this strange and wonderful website that would help you find anything that you were looking for on the internet. I still remember how wonderful it was back in 1999 and 2000 when it seemingly returned exactly what you wanted, i.e. before commercial interests took over.
We feel this may be the time to remind you the website for the film Space Jam still exists, should you fancy another trip down internet’s memory lane.
4. First venturing into chat rooms
Remember when being able to speak to anyone in the world via the click of a mouse and the tap of the keyboard completely blew your mind? Plenty of our readers did.
Live Chat Rooms
After messing around with email (with no-one to send them to) and writing über-basic HTML pages back in 1995, my classmates and I finally discovered the Virtual Irish Pub. I'm assuming it was one of the first chat rooms and at the time definitely one of the slickest. Eventually though, as with all good things, it became a paid membership site and after using it for 3-4 years we drifted off towards Blogger and eventually Wordpress sites. The golden age eh.
5. a/s/l? being a thing you asked people
And more or less everyone lying with their answer.
6. Netscape Navigator
Its era of dominance may have been ended by Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer, but Netscape was the gold standard for web browsing in the 1990s.
7. Thinking it was funny to sign your mates up to weird mailing lists
Poor cwghost got burned by this one.
I still cannot believe some of the garbage that I got in those days. I reminded some of them about their misbehaviour but doubt that they would appreciate it now!
8. Netiquette
Juicylicious remembers a time when “it was imperative that you DIDN’T SHOUT by using caps.”
SO MUCH FOR THAT, EH, TWITTER?
9. The thrill of printing any picture you wanted
Battleships & Dennis Bergkamp
One of my Dad's old colleagues was the first person I knew with the Internet. He showed it to us one day. I wasn't very impressed. I had an 8 cd-rom encyclopedia with real footage from them moon landing, what more could a boy need. When asked what I'd like to search for, I just shrugged. "Well; Do you like ships?" "Yeah, I guess" Cue a 5 minute wait for a picture of the HMS Belfast to load before a further 5 to print it out. Getting the hang of it now, I requested a picture of Dennis Bergkamp. The internet was for printing pictures of ships and Arsenal legends for a good 2 years after that.
10. The thrill of not having to print anything at all
Of course, it wasn’t all about printing off pictures of Arsenal legends. Pippin62 writes:
The idea of publishing something without having to pay a printer really excited me and between ‘98 and now, I’ve earned a crust as a web designer.
11. Dancing hamsters
Remember the Hampster Dance? Allow Jo Walters to refresh your memory:
She showed me a page of gifs of dancing hamsters with an annoying midi song on repeat. I remember thinking this wasn’t ever going to be a particular useful thing (though I did like dancing hamsters). Now, I work in digital communications so am immersed in the internet. I do still enjoy animal gifs though so maybe not much has changed.
The original Hampster Dance has been preserved here. May it live forever more.
12. MSN Messenger
ModetoJoy was a huge fan of MSN Messenger.
This totally drew me into the internet when I first started using it in 2000. I loved how I used to talk to friends on MSN Messenger all the time. It felt cool and forward-thinking.
13. Thinking you could read everything on the internet
I was going to read the internet
I remember when I first heard about the internet and decided I was going to learn so much by reading it. Yes, that's right - I was going to read the whole internet!
To be fair, at one point, you probably could read the entire internet. Nowadays, we dread to think how long it would take you.
14. Embarrassing Hotmail addresses
Someone at the Guardian had the email speedy_owl@hotmail.com. We’re not going to name them. It definitely isn’t the person writing this article. Nope. It’s alright though, they weren’t the only ones.
@elenacresci sillywillydumb @ http://t.co/BDLpkhUQZ4 is my contribution
— Will Barker (@willdotbarker) March 12, 2014
15. Finding the whole thing absolutely terrifying
Fear of a foreign landscape
I remember feeling like the internet was on one virtual street. One website lined up next to the other. And as soon as i strayed off this path i got incredibly dislocated and felt like i had to close Netscape to start again.
16. Being surprised by the giant phone bill
Back in dial-up days, being online could get pretty expensive, which ID626656 found out the hard way.
Back in 1997, 2 years after the internet became available in my hometown of Taipei, I could only get my access to the internet via dial-up on a pay-by-minute basis, which is quite different from what people may enjoy today. Under these circumstances, those interesting explorations into the internet soon became expensive phone bills for my parents.
17. Thinking: “Ceefax is way better than this.”
Actually, a lot of you didn’t think this internet malarkey was going to take off at all. BeansYa told us:
In 1991 a friend of mine who was studying to be a patent attorney explained how email and browsers worked. I didn’t like the sound of it and didn’t think it would catch on.
18. How slow it used to be
Heidi Crook, now a web designer who doesn’t think the internet is rubbish, remembers first logging on and being a mite disappointed.
I remember picking out a very long [url] from the music magazine “Select”. We typed it in and anxiously awaited what it would appear. It took ages and all that appeared was a large picture of Blur’s Parklife Album. We were kinda disappointed, we left the library deciding that the internet was rubbish.
19. A time before search engines
The internet before search engines
My first experiences of the internet were helping my grandfather answer The Scotman's Factfinder Crosswords using a software meta crawler which you downloaded to your desktop and which queried a number of search engines to get you "the right answer". Every weekend the desk the family computer was on would be covered in Post It notes with questions like "who scored 182 for 6 against England in 1982" and then a character count for how long the answer was. Everything was dial-up of course with a long telephone cable running down the hall corridor to where the phone was normally plugged in.
20. Being polite to Ask Jeeves
Remember Ask Jeeves? He was the man who knew everything.
Ask Jeeves - Politely mind you.
When Jeeves was THE search engine we used to be very polite and wordy. 'Could you possibly tell me what is the capital of Kuala Lumpur please?' 'Would you know how many sheets of paper in a ream Sir?' 'I'm not sure, but is the motor at the front of the car please?' It was like you were talking to a real person somewhere. Shame...
21. Geocities
At one point, GeoCities was the fifth most popular site on the web. Tackler7 remembers being impressed by the possibilities for his own website:
GeoCities was a particular favourite. I marvelled at the sheer range of interests and the differences in design - from the brilliant to the gaudy rubbish. I decided that I wanted one and with the aide of a free piece of software I built my first site - for my office five-a-side team. I remember being really proud in showing it off for the first time and it was rated as site of the month in a computer magazine, which made my day.
22. Using a webcam for the first time
Primitive Webcam Chat
I am 23 years old and I am probably part of the first generation to really grow up with the internet and not really remember what life was like without the internet. On the flip-side of that, I still remember when the internet was slow, unwieldy and basically for reading. However my first experience with the internet was in 1995/6. I was in Year 1 of school, so must have been 5 years old. We were supposed to have a webcam chat with a school in America but it was everything you would expect of a webcam chat in 1996 - a grainy picture moving so slowly that it actually only obscured communication. I'm not even sure the audio worked. It was however pretty mindblowing for a 5 year old in deepest darkest North East England to see other 5 year olds all the way in the USA.
23. Huddling around your school’s only computer
Nowadays, a lot of schools have their own IT room. Back in ‘96, that wasn’t so. Kittyand fox’s primary school had the one and her secondary school had two.
One of which was our library and it would take up to five minutes sometimes just to get a web page up.
24. Waiting for images to load line by line
25. Last, but not least, the computer you used to access the internet for the first time
The first device I used with an internet connection
A green text display made by Alpha Micro. Used in 1995. Proper internet, not a limited bulletin board. I cant remember the name of the browser we had. The lack of graphics wasnt too much of a problem in the early days
We really enjoyed receiving all your submissions - you can take a look at the rest of them on GuardianWitness. As ever, feel free to add your own in the comments below.
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