The Way Back Machine

It's like pulling out your high school yearbook picture and realizing that indeed, you did wear one of those shirts with the giant collar. Looking back in time can be interesting and often humbling.

I was putting together a pitch on web evolution and needed a snapshot from the archives. I tend to use the Way Back Machine every year or two, and thought it worth a blog post for those unaware or who have simply forgotten. From Wikipedia:

"The Wayback Machine is a digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive. It is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. This service allows users to see archived versions of web pages across time -- what the Archive calls a "three dimensional index."

As of 2006, the Wayback Machine contained almost 2 petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month, a two-thirds increase over the 12 terabytes/month growth rate reported in 2003."

If you haven't popped by the WBM of late, it's worth a visit. It's nice to look back at the sites you had your hands in during the late 90's and get an appreciation for just how far we've come.

Some examples

The first public .COM I was involved with... There were earlier rev's (this is from '97), but this is the first that the Way Back Machine had... It doesn't make it through on a static snapshot, but we on the leading edge here with an animated gif. Also, you can sense the approaching apocalypse known as Y2K.

Here's a back to back of EMC.com from 1998 and from today. Just a touch of web evolution in 10 years...

Lastly, some real gems out there... Love the early view into Google in '98.. It's also impressive to see the simplicity of their early interface not that dissimilar from Google today.

And finally, a second (or third) gen of Devanna.com. The first had too many broken images and was far to embarrassing to share ;)

So take a nostalgic trip back in time with the Way Back Machine... It's a great tool to grab snaps of your early sites and include in PPT's as you discuss the evolution of the web in your org.

Comments

[Carlos Soares]

Len,
Thanks for posting the way back machine content for Data General. I got to see my press release for the AV 20000 and the collateral I wrote for the announcement on June 10, 1997. Great memories of a long ago product launch.