Historical first web page lost and found

© Mark Ollig

A May 22, 2013, “All Things Considered,” broadcast on National Public Radio (NPR) reported a historical document; the first web page – was lost.

Tim Berners-Lee, the acknowledged inventor of The Web, created the first web page.

Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web while working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research laboratory, better known as CERN, located in Switzerland.

Paul Jones, a clinical professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), intently listened to the 2013 NPR radio broadcast and became surprised upon hearing its report.

In his March 1989 proposal submitted to CERN, Berners-Lee described writing a 1980 computer program for keeping track of software in a data server system called Enquire.

The computer program “... allowed one to store snippets of information, and to link related pieces together in any way. To find information, one progressed via the links from one sheet to another,” Berners-Lee described.

Berners-Lee diagramed a flowchart showing how users of the CERN network could distribute, access, and collaborate on documents within electronic files located on various data servers.

Electronic documents could be viewed and modified by a user, no matter which type of computer or operating system they used.

Berners-Lee wrote about a generic client browser software program that allows a CERN networked computer station user to access, change, and save hypertext data stored on other networked computers.

Ted Nelson coined the word, hypertext, in the early 1960s, describing his Project Xanadu, which never became a working reality for him until 2014.

“Most systems available today use a single database. This is accessed by many users by using a distributed file system,” Berners-Lee wrote in 1989.

A single database could store a lot of information; however, he stated it was all in one place.

Berners-Lee would create protocols for a computer to link to and connect with different computer databases storing electronic documents on a shared network, no matter where they resided.

Berners-Lee’s proposal to his colleagues more than 30 years ago was the foundation for today’s World Wide Web, aka The Web.

Berners-Lee and his colleague, Robert Cailiau, began work Nov. 12, 1990, on a proposal for making hypertext accessible via a gateway over the internet.

“WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project,” is the name of their written proposal presented to CERN.

Dec. 25, 1990, Berners-Lee finished the software program he called WorldWideWeb (spelled with no spaces) and had it up-and-running on his NeXTcube computer server.

According to NPR, in 2013, the first web page was lost, but someone did have a copy of Berners-Lee’s original.

Yes, it was Paul Jones, who, in 1991, stored a copy of the famous original web page on his NeXTcube computer at UNC.

How did Jones obtain Berners-Lee’s first web page?

The backstory to Jones having a copy of the first web page is when Berners-Lee visited Jones at UNC at Chapel Hill while en route to a 1991 “Hypertext ‘91” conference in San Antonio, TX to demonstrate his new World Wide Web project.

Jones was interested in a database search software called Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), developed by Thinking Machines, Inc. out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Berners-Lee was also interested in WAIS technology and became acquainted with Jones through a mutual colleague.

“When Tim [Berners-Lee] did come to visit, he already knew that I, too, had a NeXTcube workstation computer just like his,” said Jones.

Berners-Lee used the NeXTcube computer to create the first web page at CERN.

“We talked about WAIS and WorldWideWeb software. He [Tim Berners-Lee] pulled out a floptical drive [read-write optical disk]. I installed Tim’s graphical browser [from the disk] on my NeXTcube computer. He talked me through using the WorldWideWeb software with a copy of his Hypertext ‘91 demonstration web page,” Jones said.

Berners-Lee’s Hypertext ‘91 demonstration webpage is the first web page.

After the 2013 broadcast, Jones told NPR and CERN that he knew the location of the 1991 original copy of Berners-Lee’s first web page.

Years before 2013, Jones archived data files from his NeXTcube computer onto the digital library and archive computer server, originally known as SunSITE, on the publicly accessible UNC computer server.

You may have correctly guessed the archived data included the first web page files from Berners-Lee’s optical disk still copied onto the hard drive in Jones’ NeXTcube computer.

The historical copy of the original first web page (with hypertext) created by Berners-Lee is viewable at https://bit.ly/3iVAPPm.

Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 proposal is on the World Wide Web Consortium’s website, https://bit.ly/2eOwOYN.

SunSITE became Ibiblio. The website is http://www.ibiblio.org.

Today, Jones is the director of ibiblio.org, a contributor-run, online digital library of public domain and creative commons media. He is also a clinical professor in the School of Information and Library Science and at UNC School of Media and Journalism.

Jones was the co-chair of the 2010 International World Wide Web Conference.

Thanks, Paul, for saving this historical web page document for future generations to look back on.

The historical copy of the original first web page (with hypertext) created by Berners-Lee

NASA’s Gemini OBC was a vital key

© Mark Ollig

It was the start of the 1960s.

President John F. Kennedy wanted the country to take a leading role in what was known as “The Space Race.”

On May 25, 1961, before a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy spoke of his steadfast support of our country’s space program and made a bold challenge for the United States.

Kennedy mentioned the success of the 1957 Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite and how the United States’ efforts in space were in review, “examining where we are strong and where we are not.”

He said it is now “... time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.”

President Kennedy then made this bold challenge, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

The United States responded to his challenge by using human ingenuity and talent to create the required technologies and materials to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back to Earth.

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11’s Lunar Module named Eagle landed astronauts Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Neil Armstrong onto the moon’s surface.

The third Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins, orbited the moon in the Command Module named Columbia.

The Eagle’s ascent stage would take Aldrin and Armstrong off the moon’s surface to a rendezvous and docking with Columbia.

All three astronauts returned safely to Earth.

Testing several types of equipment in space was needed to achieve Apollo 11’s historical accomplishment, including an onboard guidance computer.

In 1962, in their Space Guidance Center in Owego, NY, the computer folks at IBM began building a digital onboard guidance computer (OBC) for NASA’s Gemini spacecraft.

On March 23, 1965, astronauts Gus Grissom and John Young were the first crew inside a Gemini space capsule. They performed tests on and used the OBC to assist with three orbits around the Earth.

A Gemini astronaut would enter or key in space navigational data into the onboard guidance computer using pushbuttons. The computer’s display screen showed the spacecraft flight data.

The OBC assisted Gemini astronauts with steering their craft through complicated space maneuvers and completing navigational and trajectory calculations Apollo astronauts going to the moon would require.

Apollo spacecraft used a similar, but more technologically-advanced digital onboard guidance computer on their missions to the moon, called the Apollo Guidance Computer or AGC.

In preparation for the Apollo moon trip, a series of Gemini spacecraft missions successfully tested numerous procedures and completed various objectives with the OBC, including:

• maneuvering an orbiting spacecraft;

• rendezvousing procedures with another spacecraft for docking;

• navigating in space;

• maintaining a controlled Earth-reentry using an onboard computer.

For its time, Gemini’s digital onboard guidance computer was considered an advanced piece of technology.

It was designed with a pushbutton data input interface, making it easily operable by the spacecraft’s crew.

The onboard guidance computer performed highly complex calculations (over 7,000 per second) used for space maneuvering, course guidance, navigation, and other operations.

Located in an equipment bay wall to the left of the Gemini spacecraft commander’s seat, the OBC weighed almost 59 pounds, and its dimensions measured 18.9 inches high by 14.5 inches wide by 12.75 inches deep.

The onboard guidance computer control panel contains a seven-segment modular display readout and a modular display keyboard with a pushbutton labeled “Zero” and individual 1 – 9 buttons.

Three other pushbuttons are labeled: READOUT, CLEAR, and ENTER. In addition, the digital OBC system contains a variety of status indicator lamps and rotary control switches.

The Gemini digital onboard guidance computer performs specific logic-processing functions within its programming modules using high-level flight operational software.

The OBC processed data from computing telemetry systems on the ground or by an astronaut inside the spacecraft entering data using the pushbuttons.

The Titan II rocket the Gemini spacecraft was attached to during liftoff also contained a digital guidance computer.

This computer adjusted the Titan rocket’s velocity and made any course corrections needed for getting the Gemini spacecraft into the correct Earth-orbiting path.

The Titan guidance computer relayed data to Gemini’s onboard guidance computer.

If the Titan computer failed, the Gemini onboard guidance computer would take over and calculate any needed altitude course corrections.

One special mission saw the Gemini 6 spacecraft using its onboard computer to support its orbit and calculate rendezvous maneuvering trajectories to align itself with another spacecraft in Earth orbit; Gemini 7.

Dec. 15, 1965, 160 miles above the Earth, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 conducted the first successful maneuvering and rendezvous between two Earth-orbiting spacecraft.

Both spacecraft came within 1 foot of each other and could have physically hard-docked; however, the design of the Gemini spacecraft did not permit this.

The success of the Gemini ship-to-ship maneuver test demonstrated the ability of the onboard guidance computer to calculate a rendezvous between two orbiting spacecraft.

A docking mechanism is a part of the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module spacecraft design.

NASA was now confident Apollo spacecraft could conduct a successful rendezvous maneuver while orbiting the moon using the digital onboard guidance computer.

NASA’s Gemini digital onboard guidance computer proved to be one of the vital keys used to unlock the door for President Kennedy’s goal of sending an American to the moon before the end of the 1960s.

You can view an eight-minute segment of President Kennedy’s May 25, 1961 address to Congress encouraging the United States to go to the moon at https://bit.ly/2TC6OsY.

This internet public library provides a detailed description (including diagrams) of the Gemini OBC: http://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/Gemini.html.

The United States spent a total of $25.8 billion during the Apollo space program to send astronauts to the moon, which, when adjusted for inflation, would today amount to around $260 billion.

Project Gemini space program cost was $1.3 billion or $13.8 billion in today’s dollars.

Gemini Onboard guidance computer (OBC) with cover removed

Bell Labs: discoveries and innovative technologies

© Mark Ollig

Founded in 1925, Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc., better known as Bell Labs, was AT&T’s (American Telephone and Telegraph) primary research and development department.

Scientists and researchers at Bell Labs invented thousands of technologies and devices, and obtained more than 26,000 patents.

Let’s take a look back at some of them.

From 1920 to 1923, scientists at Bell Labs designed the telephotography machine (think facsimile/fax machine).

May 19, 1924, this analog facsimile machine, manufactured at AT&T’s subdivision, Western Electric, transmitted one photograph 500 miles over telephone wires from a Cleveland sending station to a New York City receiving station in 4.5 minutes.

Bell Labs began using the telephotography machine for transmitting photographs to newspaper outlets over AT&T’s long-distance telephone network.

In March 1925, Picture Telegraphy (telephotography machine) transmitted photographs of President Calvin Coolidge’s second inauguration photos from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York over the AT&T telephone network.

April 7, 1927, Bell Labs publicly demonstrated the first long-distance live television transmission over telephone lines of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover from Washington, DC to New York City.

“I am glad to welcome television as the latest product of scientific discovery,” Hoover said during the demonstration. “It promises that where the voice has led the way over the telephone wires, the eye will ultimately follow.”

Hoover would serve as US president from 1929 to 1933.

In 1929, at Bell Labs, Herman Affel and Lloyd Espenschied invented coaxial cable, opening the door for making it possible to carry thousands of simultaneous telephone calls over AT&T long-distance circuits.

In 1941, AT&T placed 200 miles of coaxial cable within an operational telephone network between Minneapolis, MN, and Stevens Point, WI.

By July 1950, there were 100,000 TV sets in the Minneapolis-St. Paul (Twin Cities) Minnesota viewing area.

Television broadcasting using coaxial cable arrived in the Twin Cities area Sept. 30, 1950, over TV station KSTP.

Bell Labs’ 1947 invention of the transistor significantly improved the efficiency and reliability of computers and modern electronics over vacuum tubes and mechanical relays.

Also, in 1947, the first concept paper of a wireless cellular telephone network began at Bell Labs; however, the technology needed to build it did not yet exist.

This proposal envisioned a geographical cellular network “following” telephone users as they moved throughout a network topology, handing off voice calls from one radio cell site to another without interruption. Its design looked like interconnected honeycombs.

AT&T activated the first working US commercial cellular telephone system in Chicago, IL, in 1983.

The first long-distance transatlantic coaxial copper-core telephone cable system called TAT-1 (Transatlantic No. 1) from Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada to Oban, Scotland was completed Sept. 25, 1956.

TAT-1 was a joint venture of the General Post Office of the UK, Canadian Overseas Telecommunications Corporation, and AT&T.

In 1949, Bell Labs first developed the telephone line modem (modulator/demodulator) to change digital data signals into modulated analog signals suitable for broadcast over analog telephone circuits, giving birth to the modern telephone-line modem.

Bell Lab’s prior work with the telephotography machine aided the modem’s development.

In 1958, the North American Air Defense (NORAD) first used modems to transmit digital computer data over dedicated analog signaling telephone wires.

AT&T manufactured a 300 bps (bits per second) Bell 103 modem, which became available for the public and private businesses to use over the conventional telephone network in 1962.

A 1960 Bell System technical journal described its dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) keypad for pushbutton “touch-tone” telephone dialing, saying it would eventually replace the rotary dial used in a standard telephone.

AT&T first demonstrated touch-tone dialing to the public at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.

Nov. 18, 1963, the first touch-tone keypad dialers installed in telephones for public use were in the Greensburg and Carnegie, PA telephone exchanges.

The first public touch-tone telephone was the Western Electric model 1500, which had a keypad layout of 10 buttons, with the numeral one at the top left and zero in the bottom row.

Older telephone folks seem to think the number sign aka hashtag/pound (#) and star (*) key buttons, added in 1968, were used to access computers through telephone lines.

And yes, I have a vintage 10-button Western Electric model 1500 telephone.

In 1979, my hometown of Winsted’s first touch-tone dialing service was at St. Mary’s Hospital and Home, with the installation of the digital computerized telephone system, the GTD-120 PABX (Private Automatic Branch Exchange) manufactured by GTE Automatic Electric in Northlake, IL. It was one of Minnesota’s first digital business telephone systems and was installed and maintained by highly-skilled and dedicated technicians from the Winsted Telephone Company.

A year later, Winsted Telephone Company made significant modifications to its central dial office system by installing dual-tone multi-frequency receiver equipment, allowing all of their local subscribers the option of using touch-tone telephones.

In 1996, Lucent Technologies (started by AT&T) had taken over AT&T’s Bell Labs development and research.

April 2, 2006, the French company, Alcatel, acquired Lucent Technologies and Bell Labs.

Nov. 3, 2016, the Finnish communications and technology company, NOKIA, purchased Alcatel-Lucent (and Bell Labs) for $16.6 billion.

Today, Bell Labs is headquartered in Murray Hill, NJ, and employs more than 340 people.

Visit Bell Labs at https://www.bell-labs.com.

Below are photos of my Western Electric model 1500 telephone:

US government website tracks the numbers

© Mark Ollig

I recently visited the US federal government’s analytics website.

This website uses a digital analytical software program by Google to provide up-to-the-minute data for more than 2,000 US government websites.

According to the analytics website, its data provides a window into people’s interaction with the government online. It assists government agencies in understanding how people find, access, and use government services.

It is early Tuesday morning, and the US government’s analytics website’s homepage posted “245,463 people on government websites now,” denoting the current tracking number of real-time user connections to government websites.

The number does not remain static on the homepage. It updates in real-time.

Using my smartphone’s stopwatch app, I waited until the total number changed and then pressed the start button.

After 60 seconds, the total count changed – the numbers were automatically refreshing every minute.

Under the website’s Visits Today label, are shown 24 bar graphs for each hour of the day.

Hovering your mouse cursor over one of the bar graphs will display the number of visitors within that hour.

On the web page’s right side, a continuously updated list of the top 20 most-visited US government websites/webpages is maintained, including current real-time visits and total visitor numbers from the last seven or 30 days.

These numbers are updated every minute, and added to the archive of stored visit totals to the website.

As of this writing, the number-one visited web location during the last seven days, with 48,565,819 visitors, is the USPS (United States Postal Service) Tracking Results web page http://tools.usps.com. During the past 30 days, there were nearly 241 million visits made to this site.

Currently, the USPS Tracking Results webpage shows 23,027 active users.

These analytics provide an inside look, in real-time, at the number of people interacting within the federal government’s online public department and agency websites.

Once again, looking at the total number of folks currently using government websites, I noted it had jumped to 311,253.

Devices primarily used to access the visitor-tracked government websites are mobile, accounting for 57%, followed by desktop devices, at 41%.

The top web browser used for accessing the analytics website is Google Chrome, with 49.2%; Apple Safari, at 35.1%; Microsoft Edge, at 5.1%; and Mozilla Firefox, at 2.6%.

The top three computing operating systems used to access the website are Apple’s iOS, 34.1%; Microsoft Windows, 29.7%; and Google’s Android, at 24.6%.

Other statistical data includes the visitor percentage breakdown of US city and global country locations.

Accumulated visitor numbers and activity data from thousands of US government websites are stored on this analytics website and are downloadable at https://analytics.usa.gov/data/sites.csv.

I downloaded and opened one of the CSV (comma-separated values) files using my Excel spreadsheet program.

The spreadsheet shows each website location, along with its government branch name or department affiliation.

This spreadsheet file would make an excellent reference for looking up particular government department’s or agency’s names, including its website location.

One of the many thousands of web pages on the download file includes a Minnesota location: https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/mn/home. It is from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service website, http://www.nrcs.usda.gov.

I smiled while looking under column A on line 2,153 of the spreadsheet, which reads: https://moneyfactory.gov.

It turns out the “money factory” website is for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and belongs to the US Department of Treasury.

Anyone can obtain the real-time JavaScript Object Notation active visitor time-stamp data contents at https://analytics.usa.gov/data/live/realtime.json.

The analytics program does not track anyone’s personal information. All visitor internet addresses are anonymized.

The US government analytic website is at https://analytics.usa.gov.

You will find an A to Z website index of federal US government departments and agencies at https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies. It also contains 50 pages of Minnesota-related state government sites; here’s a shortened link for them: https://bit.ly/3fyW0Vh.

During the last 90 days, people (and likely some bots) worldwide made 6.41 billion visits to various US government websites.

As I finish this column, there are now 454,903 people active on US government websites.

It is past 10 a.m., so I imagine more folks across the time zones are well into their second or third cup of coffee and are logging in.

Have a pleasant week.