The first picture on the internet was uploaded in 1992 by the creator of the internet itself. The picture, which is of four girls posing for a picture of a band, wouldn’t be all that unfamiliar with many pictures on your Facebook feed today. But unlike the pictures that appear in your feed, this one has the distinction of making history.
Could you imagine the internet without pictures? They literally liven up the webpages much like illustrations do to a children’s book. Many websites wouldn’t exist without them, and even large sites such as Facebook would be a very different place without them. Yet in the early days of the internet there were no pretty pictures to gaze upon. No cat memes, or slightly revealing selfies. Just lots of information in a few select places. But back then it really didn’t matter all that much. Very few people had access to a PC, let alone the internet.
I guess that you wouldn’t be ll that surprised to learn that the quartet of female singers were also connected in one way or another to CERN. Now if you are thinking that you have heard of CERN before, but just can’t place it, they are the people who made the Large Hadron Collider. Generally these women were either partner of the scientists or assistants of the very smart crew of hard working scientists. The band, Les Horribles Cernettes was formed after one of the women who worked in the graphic design department found it difficult to have a relationship with a physicist who was working on the LHC, and composed a song about the relationship difficulties. The bad became a hit within the scientific community and continued to perform at science conventions, expos and even some Nobel Prize ceremonies until it broke up in 2012.
Now back to the first picture on the internet. Following a performance at a CERN festival, the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee asked the founder of the band for a few scanned pictures of the CERN Girls. She scanned a few copies and sent them over to him at his website, info.cern.ch. Shortly afterwards, the simple photoshopped picture of four happy girls made internet history by becoming the first picture on the internet.
