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posted by Jason Kottke  ·  gift link

Emulator of the first “readily accessible” web browser

A team of web dev hot shots recently convened at CERN to build an emulator of the CERN line-mode browser, the first browser that made the WWW accessible to a wide number of people.

The line-mode browser, launched in 1993, was the first readily accessible browser for what we now know as the world wide web. It was not, however, the world’s first web browser. The very first web browser was called WorldWideWeb and was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990.

But WorldWideWeb only worked on the NeXT operating system. WorldWideWeb was a great piece of software, but it was important that the web should be accessible to many kinds of computers, not just NeXT machines.

That’s where the line-mode browser came in. It was the first web browser with a cross-platform codebase so it could be installed on many different kinds of computers. It was a relatively simple piece of software with a very basic interface, but in the early days of the web, it was instrumental in demonstrating the power of this new medium.

The text says the line-mode browser launched in 1993 but it was actually 1991 (and first stable release in early 1992). My first browser was NCSA Mosaic so it was a treat to use this for a few minutes this morning. (via @craigmod)