Technically, it was Prodigy’s service, looking for news on the 1995 Orange Bowl (Nebraska vs Miami). Although I’ve used text-based BBS previously to chat and get dirty jokes.
So let’s say it’s with the GUI browser stuff, like IE, Netscape, Firefox (etc). In other words, the internet as we see it today, as in the http://www.*.com style.
In that case, it would be looking up cheat codes for SimCity 2000. Early 1995.
I typed in the URL for the Sydney Morning Herald - 1998, I think.
Fender Stratocaster (electric guitar)
Yeah, I’m not going to lie, it was porn. Although I don’t remember the actual website. The first site I actually remember going to was www.rotten.com.
E*Trade. March of 1996. I had just gotton a job with them and figured I’d better familiarize myself with the internet before starting. Of course, they didn’t have web-based trading back then…you had to dial up directly to them.
I first used the web in college in the lab where I was intern using a new beta program called Netscape. This was in 1994 when the web was really young. They even had printed directories of all of the websites and it wasn’t that big. Me and a grad student who was a friend of mine installed it and tried to find whatever we could. There weren’t any real search engines back then so I guess I didn’t really look up anything. I just surfed. However, within the hour, I realized the power of this new beast and started surfing for porn. Believe it or not, it was hard to find but I got better at it quickly. Better meaning I could find one unique, quality pic at the rate of one an hour. Still, I threw myself into this new endeavour with great fervor and dedication.
Those of you who joined the web in 1995 or later wouldn’t understand. The thing had already started to snowball at an exponential pace. Still, I look back upon my youth with great fondness. Sometimes I still pine for the simpler days. Kids these days don’t know how good they have it.
videogame cheat codes.
I went looking for stuff about Babylon 5 or maybe the Simpsons. July/August 1996.
The first thing I used the internet for was to get a Yahoo! Mail account, to e-mail my future wife, fall of 1996. Then I probably went looking for Beatles bootleg collectors - and found a bunch of them, too!
Probably late 1996. Looking for was stuff about Christmas traditions being pagan, not Christian, in origin.
Remember it well, actually. Late '96 or early '97 I had a friend who informed me that he was a comupter hacker. I quizzed him about that but he never gave me a satisfying definition of what, exactly, he did that made him a “hacker.”
Anyway, since I was interested in computers he showed me the machine he called “The Junkyard Dog” and clicked the icon that brought up his web browser, which, if I remember correctly was Netscape.
He went to what he called a “search engine” (AltaVista I think) and asked me to name a topic I wanted to learn about. Being skeptical, (and wanting to stump this “internet”) I answered with the most obscure topic I could imagine. I asked the internet to tell me about the Renault R17 Gordini, a very uncommon vehicle to come across in the United States. I owned one briefly and had never before (or since for that matter) seen or heard another refrence to that particular vehicle. I was simply astounded when seconds later text and even a few pictures appeard onscreen of Gordini’s speed machine. It was then I decided that I needed to know more about these internets.
I also remember being impressed with the fact that his machine was capable of photo-realistic graphics. The vast majority of my previous experience with computers had been with Apple ][e and Commodore 64 computers. I had a friend in high school who had an “IBM Clone” which was used for word processing and playing Wing Commander. That computer was most likely an early 86 machine with one meg of RAM and a hard drive with maybe 100 megabytes, but quite capable of an internet connection, if only our adolescent minds had known.
Probably some university’s Center for Medieval Studies. This was 1994 and I was a research assistant, and ended up creating the first homepage for my university’s C. for M.S.
I didn’t get on until late in 1998, and I’m pretty sure I went searching for Stephen King stuff.
Woah… I read that kinda fast and the sentences melded together… Putting a very disturbing image in my head of what did it for ya.
And I think, though I’m not 100% sure, that looking up stuff for a 5th grade school project on race car history was it?
And I distinctly remember the Netscape logo rolling extremely slowly with the shooting star and such.
It would have been probably in '94, and I struggled so much trying to get Winsocket (or whatever it was called) to work that I couldn’t begin to tell you what I did once I finally got online.
But similar to others, I was a Prodigy user in 1992 and dialed up to my first multi-line BBSes (Star*Games and Annex, if you’re in the LA area) in 1993. I was even a relay for a couple of years, back when such things were necessary.
Porn.
It was in '96 and I looked for free samples. You used to be able to order tons of free stuff from the internet…clothes, toys, bath stuff, food, you name it. I got something neat in my mailbox almost every day back then.
Jeez, I was still drinking back then. Let’s see… CompuServe, 1993 (I think), probably the first thing I deliberately went searching for was an html how-to.
Let’s see…it would have been around May/June of 1993. My roomate’s father had an account through the university he worked at. I distinctly remember that Karl had a book called “The Internet” which was like a phone book but with web pages rather than phone numbers…I wonder how big that book would be now?
In any case, the first thing I looked up was definitely naked pictures of Pamela Anderson.
I still have a copy of that book, I believe… Though it is buried somewhere in a box. I think it was from 96? It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at it. I kept it because I knew it’d give a few people a chuckle, though I must’ve found it in 2000 or so, so I already knew it was kind of a laugh.