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The Internet in 1994

Elle Draper, Stephanie Fong, Curtis Moses, and Evelina Weary

A brief history of the Internet:

1990: WorldWideWeb created (first web browser).

1993: Mosaic, a browser that supported graphics and text, "revolutionizes" the look of webpages

1994: the public begins to take note of this newfangled technology

Number of people on the internet in 1994

16 million

The Today Show discusses: "What is the Internet, anyway?"

The Today Show aired a special on the growing popularity of the Internet in 1994. The reporters were confused not only by the definition of such modern science, but also new signs such as @ and .com. They didn't think that the Internet would take off the way it has shaped our world today and were even amazed by such things like email. NBC was considered being at the forefront of this movement by having views be able to send the show emails about stories and their thoughts.

CLICK on this link to watch

What a typical webpage looked like in 1994

The introduction of graphics was revolutionary, and the first images began to appear on the web.
Font selection was extremely limited, and there wasn't much in terms of graphic design.

The design aesthetics of websites established in 1994 were hideous and quite simple to say the least. Most websites primarily consisted of a 1 color solid background, text and text links, and corny clip art. The reason for such poor web design could mostly be attributed to the limitations in internet and computer technology of the time. For example, the fastest modems of the time would run at a whopping speed of 28.8 kb/s. Today's average bandwidth for most internet systems can span from 2500kb/s to 5000kb/s. We've come a long way.

Music Kitchen webpage

Websites that existed in 1994

Darwin Awards
A website dedicated to those who improve the species but naturally selecting themselves out.

The Economist
The news site first published online content in 1994. It paid $120 to register its site.

HotWired
The website of Wired Magazine.

Pizza Hut
The pizza delivery restaurant allows people in Santa Cruz to order pizza over the Web.

The Simpsons Archive
The very first fan site for The Simpsons television show.

Some examples of what web pages looked like in 1994:



Yahoo homepage Microsoft homepage Netscape homepage

Apple's eWorld

eWorld was an online service operated by Apple Inc. between June 1994 and March 1996. The services included email (eMail Center), news, and a bulletin board system (Community Center). Users of eWorld were often referred to as "ePeople". eWorld was considered innovative for its time, but it was expensive compared to other services and not well marketed, and failed to attract a high number of subscribers. The service was only available on the Macintosh, though a PC version had been planned.
Apple eWorld

AOL's Timeline

In 1994, the first advertisers appeared on AOL, whose services reached 1 million members.

View the timeline here

Computer History - 1994

Year Event
1994 Yahoo! is founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994.
1994 Vice President Al Gore makes a speech where he coins the term "Information Superhighway."
1994 IBM releases OS/2 Warp.
1994 CDDI is adopted into the X3-T9.5 standard.
1994 VESA Local Bus 2.0 is released.
1994 Intel releases the second generation of Intel Pentium processors on March 7, 1994.
1994 Netscape (Mosaic Communications corporation) is found by Marc Andreesen and James H. Clark April 4, 1994.
1994 Caldera is founded.
1994 3DFX is founded.
1994 The company Silicon & Synapse is renamed to Blizzard.
1994 Acorp is founded.
1994 Håkon Wium Lie comes up with a concept for CSS.
1994 Microsoft introduces SMS, now known as SCCM.
1994 Iomega releases its Zip disk drive and diskettes.
1994 Red Hat Linux is founded.
1994 Microsoft releases its beta for Windows 95, code named Chicago.
1994 Mindsping is founded.
1994 initio is established.
1994 Corsair is founded.
1994 Rasmus Lerdorf creates PHP.
1994 IBM PCD introduces the IBM ThinkPad 775CD, the first notebook with an integrated CD-ROM.
1994 Hotwired sells the first banner ad to AT&T on October 27, 1994 and begins running the first Internet banner ad campaign.
1994 A mathematical flaw in the Intel Pentium involving the Pentium not correctly performing floating-point calculations is discovered. Later this leads to Intel millions of processors.
1994 YAHOO is created in April, 1994.
1994 PCTEL is founded.
1994 PC CHIPS is incorporated.
1994 Pervasive Software is founded.
1994 Sunbelt Software is founded.
1994 Phoebe is founded.
1994 JTS is founded.
1994 Eiger Labs is founded.
1994 The e-mail hoax "Good Times virus" is first sent out in e-mail. The hoax claimed that an e-mail containing "Good Times" in the subject was spreading on the Internet and if opened would erase everything on the hard drive and to forward the warning to all your friends. This e-mail continues to be sent out even today.
1994 MS-DOS 6.22 was released April, 1994.
1994 Intel introduces the Intel 486DX4 processor.
1994 Commodore computers declares bankruptcy April 29, 1994.
1994 ANSI approves the ATA standard May 12, 1994.
1994 Bashir Rameyev passes away May 16, 1918
1994 Microsoft releases Windows 3.11.
1994 Geek Squad is founded June 16, 1994.
1997 The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is established.
1994 Jay Miner passes away June 20, 1994 (Age: 62).
1994 Norway's telecom company, Telenor, starts a research project that later becomes Opera Software
1994 Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 was released September 21, 1994.
1994 The W3C organization is founded by Tim Berners-Lee on October 1, 1994.
1994 The Mach Project ends.
1994 Mosaic Netscape 0.9, the first Netscape browser is officially released October 13, 1994. This browser also introduces the Internet to Cookies.
1994 Perl 5.000 is released October 17, 1994.
1994 Professor Thomas Nicely sends an e-mail on October 30, 1994 describing the Intel FPU bug.
1994 Amazon.com domain is registered November 1, 1994.
1994 WXYC (89.3 FM Chapel Hill, NC USA) becomes first traditional radio station to announce broadcasting on the Internet November 7, 1994.
1994 Mosaic branches off the company Netscape November 14, 1994.
1994 The W3C organization holds its first meeting December 14, 1994.
1994 Netscape version 1 is released.
1994 On December 24, 1994 Unisys and CompuServe announced that they expected licensing fees for software that creates and displays GIF images. This caused a lot of hysteria among developers and website owners using GIF images because of potential future GIF taxes that lead to the development of the PNG format.

It's been almost twenty years since 1994.
Who knows what the World Wide Web will look like in 2034?

Designed for IML 400: Creative Coding for the Web, Spring 2013
Assignment 1