How to access or download pre-1996 web archives?

[HarideP]

First of all, thank so much for maintaining and sharing this amazing tool — it’s a powerful way to explore the web’s history. However, as far as I know, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine doesn’t have public captures before 1996.

Is there any way to access or retrieve early (pre-1996) web archives? Are there alternative archives, private mirrors, or academic datasets that preserve those early websites?

I’m especially interested in historical, valuable early internet content that might not be available on Internet Archive. Any advice or pointers to other resources would be greatly appreciated! 🙏 Thanks in advance for your time and help.

[joncto]

I am not aware of anything older that you can access with pywb replay and memento. Scholars who have spent decades researching the question you are asking, such as Niels Brügger or Ian Milligan, have strongly indicated that 1996 was the start of web archiving as we know it today.

(The Norwegian web archive has a server-side backup of the first Norwegian website from 1993, written by the creator of CSS Håkon Wium Lie, but its content is not yet ready for replay. Such rare examples are typically preserved as plain source code (not contained in ARC/WARC) and commonly reconstructed/reassembled with other tools that pywb.)

[HarideP]

Thanks so much for the detailed context — that’s super helpful.

That aligns with what I suspected about 1996 marking the practical start of large-scale web archiving. It’s fascinating (and a bit bittersweet) to know that most pre-1996 material survives only in isolated backups or reconstructed fragments.

I’ll definitely look into the examples you mentioned, like the Norwegian web archive’s 1993 site. If you (or anyone else) know of academic or museum projects that work with raw early web source code or private collections (e.g., CERN’s early web restoration, university web archaeology efforts, etc.), I’d love to explore those too.

Thanks again for taking the time to clarify this — really appreciate your insight!

[wumpus]

I'm not sure how early Stanford WebBase started. While the physical disks still exist, they've been powered down for a long time. So there's a possible source.