5 images that made the history of the Internet and technology

If we were to choose 5 images that made the history of technology and the internet, which one could we choose? Obviously there is no objective response, but there are images that have marked – perhaps unconsciously – the beginning of an era and have transformed our digital experience making visible what was previously impossible to show. So here is our top 5.

In 1987 a certain Steve Willite conceived the gif format to facilitate the transmission of color images on slow and incompatible computers, opening the way to the animated gifs that we know today and we all use in our chats. A few years later, in 1992, a photo of the Les Horribles Cernettes women’s group loaded on the web represented the first “personal” image published online, distinguishing itself from the images used for scientific purposes at the time. In 1997 the newly-paid Philippe Kahn sent a photo with a mobile phone for the first time, marking the beginning of a practice that we take for granted today. In 2001, then, the image of the Bliss green hill, the predefined background of Windows XP, demonstrated the power of photographs to transform into digital symbols recognizable everywhere. Finally, in 2005, the cover of the first video shared on YouTube inaugurated an era of social sharing that would have revolutionized the way we tell our life online.

The first animated gif (1987)

The interchange format graphics, or gif, was developed in 1987 by Steve Willite to allow the efficient transmission of color images on different computers and systems. The first example depicted a clip art plane that crossed a pixelated sky. Originally static, the gifs were conceived to be “extensible”, allowing developers to add personalized elements. Since the mid -90s, the animated gifs became popular, giving life to ephemeral and viral symbols of the Internet, as dancing children, capable of capturing the attention of users of the first websites.

Les Horribles Cernettes (1992)

On July 18, 1992, a photo of the women’s band Les Horribles Cernettes, known to parody physics and life at CERN (Conseil Européen pour La Recherche Nucléaire), was loaded on the World Wide Web. This image is considered the first “personal” shared online and the first of a band on the web. The photo, tiny compared to today’s standards (about 120 x 50 pixels), took a minute to load, but represented a key moment: bring unscientific content on the web and open the way to sharing life and online creativity.

The first photo shared with a mobile phone (1997)

Send images with a mobile phone was unthinkable in the 90s, but on 11 June 1997 Mr. Philippe Kahn created the first sharing of this type. Using a laptop, a Motorola mobile phone and a Casio camera, Kahn sent the photo of her newborn daughter Sophie. Technically the photo was not taken with the phone, since the first model with camera appeared only in 1999, but Kahn’s inventive combination marked the beginning of shared mobile photography.

Bliss: the green hill of Windows XP (2001)

The background of Windows XP, called Bliss, shows a green hill and a blue sky with white clouds, immortalized by Charles O’rear in 1996 in the county of Sonoma, California. The landscape was free from vineyards due to a philossera infestation, an insect that attacks the roots of the vine, and the winter rains had made the grass incredibly green. Taken with a Mamiya Rz67 camera on Fujifilm’s film, the image was purchased by Microsoft in 2000 and, with the release of Windows XP in 2001, became one of the most seen images in history.

The cover of the first YouTube video (2005)

With the birth of YouTube in 2005, users were able to share personal videos on large scale online. The first video published on the platform was entitled Me at the zoo And he portrayed Jawed Karim, one of the co-founders of the platform, in front of the fence of the elephants of a zoo precisely. From there the platform had an amazing success, so much so that he attracted the attention of Google who acquired it in 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars. Today YouTube is one of the pillars of the web. And to think that it had been thought as a dating site in which to load video presentations!