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19th Jun 2015

DJ Pete Tong reading out his full website address in 1995 is a classic…

It's all gone Pete Tong...

Ben Kenyon

Many, many moons ago there was a time when the Internet was all new and shiny.

Back in those days terms like Twitter, LOL and broadband weren’t even on the radar and it would be six years before you could look stuff up on Wikipedia.

They were dark and confusing times – even standard web addresses used to blow people’s mind.

If you want an insight into this strange and ancient world of the nascent Internet, look no further than this from DJ Pete Tong 20 years ago.

Someone has found soundbite of the veteran artist reading out his website address on his Essential Mix radio show…in full, agonising detail.

“It’s very complicated, but here it comes,” he says. “Http, semi colon, forward slash, forward slash, www dot, BBCNC dot org, dot UK, forward slash BBCTV, forward slash Radio 1, forward slash P, slash Tong, forward slash index,full stop, HTML.”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but if you’ve got a computer and you’re out there on the internet, you’ll understand what I mean.”

We can imagine back in 1995 this caused serious panic and confusion among the already-baffled 90s rave crowd.

That’s a slice of history right there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyRklSLMqTM

H/T @MichaelHogan