Who knew that the oldest US Website was a page from the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC)? Now you can explore the evolution of that oldest Website via the Stanford Libraries Wayback Machine. We’re now locally running an instance of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Soon, all of our Web harvesting collections will also be available via the Stanford Wayback search interface. This includes some rich collections of government publications including Freedom of Information (FOIA), Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports, Fugitive US Agencies, Bay Area Governments, and more!
At a microscopic level, web archives document the evolution of individual websites. At a macroscopic level, they document the evolution of the Web itself. In the case of web archives for the period when the entire Web consisted of only a handful of individual websites, changes to even a single website reflect changes to the Web itself. We are pleased to announce the availability of such an archive, notably featuring the oldest U.S. website, dating to December 21, 1991.
via Explore the oldest U.S. website | Stanford University Libraries.
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In deference to the Internet Archive, Stanford changed it’s collection name to “Stanford Web Archive Portal.” With Stanford’s launch, we also join the list of repositories with native Memento support (http://mementoweb.org/depot/). Going forward, we plan to make much more content available through the platform.