Exhibition: 64 Bits: An exhibition of the Web's lost past

Billions of people use the internet on a daily basis! But, do you know who invented the search engine? Would you be interested to browse the world’s first ever website? Have you ever heard of Susan Kare?

As part of a wider digital archaeology project, it seeks to plug gaps in the historical record by telling the stories of the forgotten artist engineers that shaped today’s digital culture. Take Alan Emtage, Barbadian-born inventor of the search engine. Billions of people use the technology he created on a daily basis but very few know his name. The exhibition includes a working version of his first search engine, Archie. Equally significant is the work of designer Susan Kare. Her icons and fonts have been seen by billions of people, yet few know her name. The exhibition incorporates a selection of the key milestones in the career, including the original Macintosh icons, the MacPaint interface and the Microsoft Solitaire playing cards.

A key part of the exhibition is an open-door digital media archiving service, supported by the British Library, where artists and designer can bring in obsolete media for us to migrate inaccessible historical artwork to a modern format. Where appropriate, the excavated work will be exhibited as part of the exhibition.

• Browse the very first website from 1991
• Search the web on Archie (the first search engine)
• Enjoy the very first web comic
• Order a pizza on the first transactional website
• See if the coffee is brewed on the world’s first webcam
• Check out the first animated website
• Create your own digital city
• Take home your very own ASCII portrait