A comprehensive preservation initiative dedicated to recovering, cataloging, and rendering web pages as they appeared in the Mosaic browser — the first widely-used web browser from 1993.
The Mosaic Archive Project represents one of the most ambitious digital preservation efforts ever undertaken. Launched in 1996 by a consortium of NCSA alumni, web historians, and preservationists, this initiative aims to capture and preserve the entire visual experience of the early web as rendered through Mosaic — the browser that brought the World Wide Web to the masses.
What makes this project unique is not just the collection of HTML source code, but the faithful recreation of how pages looked and felt in the Mosaic browser environment. Every color, every font rendering, every broken image placeholder — all preserved with meticulous attention to period accuracy.
This page was created using NCSA Mosaic, the first graphical web browser.
Best viewed at 640x480 resolution in 16 colors.
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This page is part of the Mosaic Archive Project.
Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina's Mosaic browser, released in 1993, was the gateway through which millions of people first experienced the World Wide Web. Before Mosaic, the web was an academic curiosity accessed through command-line tools. Mosaic made it visual, intuitive, and accessible.
By preserving pages as they appeared in Mosaic, we're not just saving HTML code — we're saving the experience of the early web. The way tables were used for layout, the limited color palettes, the chunky serif fonts, the "under construction" GIFs — these aren't just aesthetic choices, they're cultural artifacts of a specific moment in human history.
Our preservation pipeline uses a combination of period-accurate emulation and modern archival technology to ensure every page is captured with maximum fidelity.
A sampling of pages preserved by the Mosaic Archive Project. Each entry represents a faithful recreation of how the page appeared in Mosaic at the time of capture.
A dedicated team of historians, engineers, and preservationists working to keep the early web alive.
The Mosaic Archive Project provides programmatic access to our collection through a RESTful API. Researchers, developers, and educators can query the archive by date, URL, content type, and more.
Access the full API documentation for authentication, rate limits, and data export options.