Column Chronicles: Web pages enter their 26th year on line

Web pages enter their 26th year on line

Frank Cotolo
February 2, 2017

Though it is hard to believe, at least for me, 2016 is the 26th year web pages have been in existence. Ask anyone today to guess how long web pages have been in existence and you are bound to get responses like seventy-five, ninety-four and even one hundred and six years. People are shocked when I tell them it has merely been a quarter of a century since the first World Wide Web page.

It was no surprise that not many people saw the first web page in 1990, since no one was looking for web pages since there were none. The first web page, which was dedicated to explaining how to create a hypertext-based web site, relied on word of mouth to attract traffic.

Also not surprising is the discovery that there were other attempts at creating World Wide Web pages before the first one went live. Recently, a number of people who failed at the process talked with reporters for a major article in a minor magazine. Here are some excerpts (their names have been withheld due to their shame from failure).

"I was dabbling with the digital format," said a man from Michigan, "when I realized it would be great if I could get a web page on line before anyone else. Since no one had ever seen a web page I didn’t think it mattered what was on it. People would just be amazed by it. I decided on a page devoted to the ancient art of arm wrestling but before I finished it, I did a survey asking people if they would pay to see a web page like that and each one said no and told me I was wasting my time with the Internet. I dropped the project."

"I thought I could figure out the hypertext language," said a man from Wyoming, "but since I was only seven years old at the time I highly overrated my own intelligence and it took me sixteen more years to learn. By then, there were lots of web pages."

"I knew this Internet idea was going to take off," said a man from New York City, "so I stopped doing my day job as a city-street jackhammer operator and began to think how I could put photos on line, like on a special page that everyone could look at, because no one was doing that. Unfortunately, my younger brother, who was also a city-street jackhammer operator, came down with 'the rattles,' which is a life-altering condition lots of city-street jackhammer operators got from working too long as a city-street jackhammer operator. What happens is the person gets shaking spells without notice. Sometimes the spells are short and other times they are long but they always interrupt simple human behavior, like pouring coffee, operating a motor vehicle or swallowing food. So, I had to take care of my little brother full time, which didn't leave me any room for the web page thing I was going to do. The good side of that was the doctor told me had I continued to work as a city-street jackhammer operator, I would have come down with a case of rattles that was worse than the one that my brother still lives with to this day."

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.