A VHS-ripped video shows how the internet/web looked in 1996

Someone located a VHS copy of an hour-long program from 1996 called Discovering the Internet and ripped it to YouTube. Total nostalgia bomb for me…even at 28.8K modem speeds, I probably spent 12 hours a day online back then, wrestling with HTML, Photoshop, frames, and JavaScript.

In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at the differences between The Internet and The World Wide Web, the differences between commercial OnLine Services such as the Microsoft Network, Prodigy, or America Online and the Internet, how to get connected to the Web, how to use something called a Web browser to navigate the Web, what a Web Page is, and how to search, locate, and download all types of files, from information files to video and audio files.

It’s worth skipping ahead to 17:30 to hear how the host pronounces “URL”.

See also a brief clip of Blogger/Twitter/Medium co-founder Evan Williams explaining the Internet in the mid-90s.

Look at that kid! He just knew the Internet was going to be a big deal, and boy was he right. (via laughing squid)

• Evan Williams
• video
• WWW