I have proclaimed for several years on my Sciencebase site that I’ve had a web presence since 1996 because that was the earliest date I could prove that I’d been publishing online. But, while looking for some handouts for a careers in the media event at which I’m speaking soon, I unearthed a stash of emails that I’d printed out (why?) back in October 1995 that show very clearly that I had a URL in my .sig then and probably even earlier that year.

Those emails nudge my original web presence back a year earlier than I thought. The web was invented in 1989 (the year I got my first email address, on the UK academic system JANET) but it was not announced that it would be available to the public until April 1993 and the first public sites were seen in 1994.

Back then, no one had ever Googled anything, Amazon was yet to sell a book, and there was search engine optimization of any color hat, black, white or gray. Things were very different. As I recall, the UK was leading the way with mobile phone (cell phone) uptake although adoption was not widespread), certainly a cell phone was an incredible rarity in the US and would remain so for several years to come.

Incidentally, that original web address of mine is long gone, it was hosted on the AFN Freenet system in the US, although I think I may have had a page on CCN before that. If only I could find some more printed out emails from earlier in 1995 or perhaps even 1994…

(The photo above is one I took of the row of red phone boxes on Market Square in Cambridge several years ago, these nostalgic artefacts are still functional but I suspect the advent and ubiquity of smart phones as well as economic cuts will see them disappear from British cityscapes at an increasing rate in years to come. Sadly.