The online world left no physical tracks. This meant that a permanent record was nearly impossible to keep because hard disks were small and CD and DVD writers were not yet invented. When technology advanced, everyone raced to implement it. A new version would appear online, and the old very likely would be lost forever.

It appeared to me that the history of a new medium—one that I believed could be nearly as important as the invention of the printing press—was being lost. That was the impetus for The Online Timeline. Starting in 1990, I captured screen shots almost daily. I tracked events and accumulated hundreds of clips from print media. In 1998 I had the idea for the timeline and spent months in libraries and on LexisNexis searching print archives to piece together the early years.

If you have materials from these early years, especially promotional ones, contact me at dave@carlsonsite.com.

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