August 2019

In March 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a document called “Information Management: A Proposal.” Berners-Lee hoped to solve the problem of information sharing that was proving a common hindrance to the scientists in his lab. After submitting the proposal to his boss, the feedback he received was “vague but exciting,” an interesting way to describe what would become the World Wide Web.

Now, 30 years later, we celebrate this occasion each year on August 1: World Wide Web Day. Berners-Lee’s creation ultimately reshaped the way human civilization communicates, from government to business to art to the every-day. And like any communication method, its users inevitably change and reorganize it over time, often rendering old products anywhere from hilarious to inexplicable.

In honor of this 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web, let’s look back at UGA’s webpages of yore: built long before the days of PHP and HTML5, when you loaded a video today to watch it tomorrow, and when GIFs were innovative, transcendent mergers of technology and art.

We’ve got a few of our favorites listed below, but you can track down the web history of any school, college or department (or any website) you like at archive.org.