Back in 1993 I looked up HTML coding. Used that knowledge to create a web site for the company I was working for (they had never even heard of the Internet) and wound up getting promoted because of it.
Of course, that was my first search at work. My first search at home was for…um…pictures of an adult nature for purely prurient nature.
The first website I ever went to was Ultimate Band List, back in 1995 or so. At the time, it did what allmusic.com now does: provide bios and discographies for Every Band Ever.
Porn - a now-defunct site at www . slutsurfers . com
Saw it on the internet archive recently, had a twinge of nostalgia.
Cymro
Well, If you are talking about the Internet, rather than the WWW. My first time was 91-92ish, I think on Archie, looking for information on a School Chemistry project.
My first Web experience would have been around 93, looking at a comp-sci professors web site.
It was around 1996, my friend introduced my to either Lycos or AltaVista, and said that I could find information on anything. I looked over at my bookshelf and entered my first search based on one of the titles: “Peasant’s Revolt of 1381”. I was impressed.
I think the next thing I searched was my name, followed soon after by porn.
Deinicthys, the enormous Paleozoic fish with the two huge fangs top and bottom.
I had a theory I wanted to check about it. I quickly found out that:
1.) Its name has been changed from the way-cool Deinicthys (Meaning “Terrible Fish”) to the stupid-sounding Dunkleosteus (which must bean something like “Dunkle’s bony (fish)”)
2.) There was almost nothing at all on the Internet about it (except for a neat cartoon showing the “Deinicthys Staple Remover”). This lead me to make the following observation about the State of the Internet at the time:
“The Internet is like a River in Texas – shallow and broad. There are 3,000 entries on Britany Spears (or whoever was big at the time) and nothing on fossil fish.”
Fortunately, things have changed.
The Dinichthys Staple Remover:
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/ftp/IMAGES/DR-FUN/Dr-Fun/df9402/df940216.jpg
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/ftp/IMAGES/DR-FUN/ar00021.htm
I had recently read an article that explained that the “internet” was a tool used by scientists to share data, and also mentioned that these wacky scientists occasionally shared things like Star Trek drinking games. So when I first fired up Mosaic, I looked up a Star Trek drinking game (text only).
And when I found the Star Trek drinking game, I was completely amazed (despite having no particular interest in Star Trek or drinking games). It was a marvel. It was seriously like magic, right at my own desk. It also had the feeling of an unbelievable coincidence – like what are the odds that I could read about a Star Trek drinking game, and then actually FIND it? I had this mindset that it was a bit like a lottery.
I should also note that after the Star Trek drinking game, I came up completely blank with what I should look up next. There was nothing intuitive about “let’s look something up!” I remember thinking I wished I knew what other things were on the internet, so I could look them up, but since I didn’t know, I would sort of need to wait around until someone told me something else.
I have no idea. Something on a bulletin board in the 70s or 80s I guess. I can remember that I had myname@hotmail.com and my initials@hotmail.com but lost both accounts because there was no one around to send emails to me.
early 1980s - Accoustic modem connection over DataStar to Medline to search biomedical literature
mid- to late 1980’s - Telnet remote login to a computer at NIH to search for gene sequences in Genbank
late 1980s/early 1990s - use of anonymous FTP and Gopher to download software
mid 1990s - published “my” first website
The first thing I remember looking up on the internet was “Korean flag.” I was doing my 6th grade report on South Korea. I did not find any images of a South Korean flag. I found porn. And I was disappointed[Sup]*[/Sup].
[Sup]*[/Sup]The following year, however, I would not have been disappointed at all. 