This webpage is being served to you by version 3.0A of the CERN httpd.

The CERN httpd (HTTP daemon), initially released in June 1991, was the first web server software. Version 3.0A was the final version of the software, released in July 1996. The CERN httpd was developed starting in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee, later joined by Ari Luotonen and Henrik Frystyk Nielsen.

The /hypertext directory on this server contains a 1992 partial snapshot of http://info.cern.ch, the first WWW site. This snapshot was obtained from the W3C Historical Archives, and has been merged with additional contents from the CERN httpd 3.0A distribution archive in order to fix some broken links. "The World Wide Web project" is a good page to start browsing from.

The particular server hosting this page is a containerized instance of the 3.0A httpd, assembled in 2020 -- 30 years after Tim Berners-Lee began development on the software. Only three lines in the 1996 code were changed, in order for the software to compile in a modern Linux environment.

A command-line HTTP client such as curl can be used to inspect the headers sent by this server. Note the "Server: CERN/3.0A" header, the "HTTP/1.0" version, and the nonstandard "Document follows" reason phrase after the 200 status code:

$ curl -I http://this.host HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows Server: CERN/3.0A Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:54:20 GMT Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 2367 Last-Modified: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 21:47:42 GMT