The first picture ever posted on the internet. And the story behind it.
Holy smokes! WNYC's On the Media picked up my story! (As did Gizmodo, the Atlantic, The New York Daily News, ABC, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The New York Times’ Bits blog, the Newseum, HuffPo, Public Radio International, Techmeme, BuzzFeed, the official Adobe Photoshop Twitter account (!), Uproxx, The New York Observer’s Gallerist blog, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tech News Today [fast forward to 36:51], Crikey News, Complex, The Mary Sue, the Vice mainpage, shortformblog, YourAnonNews, I’m With Kanye, DesignTaxi, Warren Ellis, Rob Sheridan, Yahoo! News Australia, CNET, MetaFilter, Mashable, PetaPixel, and… Fox News?)
NOTE: Some of these outlets (including On the Media) have incorrectly reported that this is the first photo on the Internet. It was not – we have no idea what that was, as it was probably just some random file that you had to download and couldn’t actually view online. This was the first photo on the World Wide Web, which was developed at CERN, linked to the Internet, and has come to define the world’s online experiences. Those early days are always a bit difficult to understand for laypeople like you and me. If I’d known the story would get traction with anyone outside of Motherboard’s usual geek audience, I would have included a clearer disclaimer!
