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Nicola Pellow

Summary

Nicola Pellow wrote the line-mode browser, the World Wide Web's second browser, a text-only program that ran on simple terminals and almost any kind of computer. She joined Tim Berners-Lee's WWW project at CERN as a technical student in November 1990, and the browser had a limited release in March 1991. From October 1992 she worked with Robert Cailliau on CERN's Macintosh browser, released in 1993 as Samba.

Web Building Encyclopedia · People · Last reviewed October 22, 2026 · 9 min read

Who Nicola Pellow is

Nicola Pellow was one of the first people to work on the World Wide Web project at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva. She joined as a technical student in November 1990 and began writing the line-mode browser.1

Tim Berners-Lee calls it the web’s second browser, after his own WorldWideWeb program.2 A web browser is the program that fetches pages and shows them to a reader. Pellow’s version showed pages as plain text, so it worked on simple terminals: screens and keyboards connected to a shared computer, many of which could display nothing but characters.34

She later returned to CERN to work with Robert Cailliau on the project’s Macintosh browser, which became known as Samba.56

The public record about her is short. Almost everything known comes from the project’s own pages from 1990 to 1994, Berners-Lee’s writing and CERN’s later histories. This entry keeps to what those sources document.

Joining the WWW project in 1990

The project’s formal proposal, dated November 12, 1990, was written by Tim Berners-Lee and Cailliau. It asked for four software engineers and a programmer, each working on one part of the system, such as support for a particular kind of computer.7

One of those jobs, a software engineer working in C, would help write code for dumb terminal or VT100 browsers, plus portable browser code that different browsers could share. A dumb terminal is a basic text-only screen, and the proposal notes that a browser for a VT100 type display would always ask for plain ASCII text. The proposal said this role “could include a technical student project” and penciled in the initials NP.7 It also stated that the initials marked people with interest and skills, not commitments.7

W3C’s project timeline, created by Cailliau, records that technical student Nicola Pellow joined in November 1990 and started work on the line-mode browser.1 CERN’s own history says she wrote it during her student work placement at the laboratory.8 The project’s list of people, as it stood in October 1992, describes her as a graduate of Leicester Polytechnic in the UK.5

The timing mattered. Berners-Lee’s first browser ran on a NeXT computer, and CERN notes that only a few users had access to that platform.8 By Christmas 1990, according to the timeline, both the line-mode browser and the NeXT browser could be demonstrated.9

How the line-mode browser worked

The program, called www, asked almost nothing of the screen. The project described it as suitable for dumb terminals because it needed no control sequences except carriage return and line feed.3 In practice, it only had to print a line of text and move down to the next one. It also ran inside terminal windows on workstations.3

Because a reader could not point and click, links were numbered. The browser’s quick guide explains that references appear as numbers in brackets after certain phrases, and that the reader should “type the number and RETURN” to follow one.10 Some pages were searchable indexes, which a reader queried by typing “find,” or just “f,” followed by keywords.10

That design came straight from the 1990 proposal, which said that on dumb terminals links would appear as a numbered list and be chosen by entering a number.7 CERN’s later accounts add that the browser could not handle images and worked within 24 rows of 80 characters.1112

It also did more than display pages. A 1992 paper by Berners-Lee, Cailliau and Jean-François Groff credits Pellow with originally writing the line-mode browser, and says it had become a general information access tool.13 It could be run from the command line, return formatted text or the HTML source of a page, work as a text formatter and act as a gateway when run as a server.13

Why a browser for any terminal mattered

The web needed readers before it could grow. The project’s 1992 status page said the line-mode browser gave the web a readership among anyone with a dumb terminal, covering a wide class of users who did not yet have window systems.4 CERN’s 2013 accounts put it more plainly: Berners-Lee’s first browser was beyond the capabilities of most of the computers in use at the time, so the team developed one that could work with a wide variety of computers and terminals.1412

Built to be portable

The program was written to move between machines. Its 1992 status page, which lists the authors as NP and TBL, says it ran on all Unix systems, on VMS, VM/CMS and MVS, on PCs with a suitable networking library and even on the Mac.15 Other people did some of those ports. The 1992 people list credits Eelco van Asperen with a PC port and Peter Dobberstein with the port to MVS and, indirectly, VM/CMS.5

CERN’s line-mode site calls it the first web browser with a cross-platform codebase, meaning one set of source code that could be built for many kinds of computer.16 The same site calls it the first readily accessible browser.16

How most early users first saw the web

When Berners-Lee posted about the project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup on August 6, 1991, he mentioned a browser for line mode terminals that “runs on almost anything,” available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch, the server of the first website.17

He later wrote that many people first met the web by telnetting into info.cern.ch, which gave them a crude but working line-mode interface.2 Telnet is a way of logging in to a remote computer over the internet as if from a text terminal.

That first impression had a cost. Berners-Lee recalled that many people imagined line mode was all there was to the web, and that one journalist described it as a way of finding information by typing numbers. Only NeXT users, he wrote, could see it as a point-and-click space of hypertext.2

Release dates

Sources give different years for the browser’s release. W3C’s timeline says it went to a limited audience on a few CERN machines in March 1991, had a general release on CERN’s central machines on May 17, 1991, and reached release 1.1 by anonymous FTP on January 15, 1992.19 Version 1.2 was announced on alt.hypertext and other newsgroups on February 12, 1992.9

CERN’s WorldWideWeb rebuild site also says the line-mode browser was first released in 1991.18 CERN’s line-mode site, however, says it was launched in 1992.16

The Macintosh browser with Robert Cailliau

Pellow’s first period on the project ran from November 1990 to August 1991. She returned in October 1992, and the people list of that month says she was then working on the Mac browser.5

A Macintosh browser had been part of the plan from the start. The 1990 proposal asked for a browser for the Mac “in the Macintosh style,” with Cailliau’s initials penciled in for the job.7

The project’s status page for the Mac browser, in its November 1992 form, lists the authors as RC and NP. It says the browser was written in object-oriented Think C, a C programming environment for the Mac, that a pre-alpha version was available, and that the first release was planned for December 1992.19

W3C’s timeline records an alpha release of CERN’s Mac browser in January 1993.1 A later status page, headed SAMBA, credits R Cailliau and N Pellow of CERN and says version 1.0 was released in April 1993. It needed Apple’s MacTCP networking software and could be downloaded by FTP from info.cern.ch.6

Berners-Lee’s FAQ describes Samba as an attempt to port the design of the original WorldWideWeb browser to the Mac. It says Samba was not ready before NCSA released the Mac version of Mosaic, which eclipsed it.2 W3C’s timeline dates NCSA’s working versions of Mosaic for X, PC/Windows and Macintosh to September 1993.1

The sources differ on credit. The FAQ names Cailliau as Samba’s author, while both status pages also list Pellow.2196

What is documented afterwards

Very little is on public record about Pellow after the Mac browser. The October 1992 people list gave her second period as starting in October 1992 and left its end date as two question marks.5 A later version of that list, created in May 1994, carries the same entry and a warning that the page dates from 1994 and was not updated.20

Her name stayed with the software. W3C’s page for the Line Mode Browser, last revised in May 1998, credits Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, Tim Berners-Lee and Nicola Pellow. By then the browser served as an example application for libwww, W3C’s sample code library.21

CERN’s 1997 history handout, kept online for the tenth anniversary of the web software’s public domain release, names her in its account of 1991. It describes two practical developments that made the web attractive to other laboratories and to a wider audience at CERN, and the first is that technical student Nicola Pellow wrote a simple browser for many different computers.22

Jeremy Keith, a web developer who took part in CERN’s 2013 rebuild, wrote that her involvement in starting the web ended around 1993 and that she never came to any of the reunions.23 The sources consulted for this entry do not document her later career.

Sources also describe her role in slightly different words. W3C’s timeline and CERN’s 1997 handout call her a technical student, and CERN’s short history refers to a student work placement.1228 A 2013 CERN article instead calls her a CERN fellow and spells her first name “Nicolla.”11

Rebuilding the line-mode browser in 2013

In 2013, CERN brought the browser back. It invited web developers to a two-day coding event on September 19 and 20, 2013, to recreate the line-mode browser so that it would run inside a modern browser.1412

CERN’s call for developers named Pellow as the young student hired to write the original, and called the browser “one of the key cultural assets” of the web’s early story.12 A CERN article published on the first day of the event said the aim was to let visitors experience the web as many of its first users did.11

The team’s making-of page says twelve people took part. It explains that the original was only viewable, and barely usable, on a terminal kept at CERN, and that the team wanted a version anyone could run and point at modern websites.24 The result is the simulator at line-mode.cern.ch.16

Keith reported that the team found the original source code surprisingly short, and that the term style sheet already appeared in one of its comments.23 He also noted that browsers of that era ignored tags they did not recognize and displayed the content between them. The line-mode browser would therefore have shown the JavaScript inside modern pages as text, and the team chose to let the simulator display it too.23

Timeline

  1. CERN opens a two-day coding event to recreate the line-mode browser14
  2. NCSA releases Mosaic for X, PC/Windows and Macintosh1
  3. Samba, the Mac browser by Cailliau and Pellow, reaches version 1.06
  4. CERN's Mac browser is released as an alpha1
  5. Pellow returns to the project to work on the Mac browser5
  6. Line mode browser version 1.2 is announced on newsgroups9
  7. Line mode browser release 1.1 is available by anonymous FTP9
  8. Berners-Lee's alt.hypertext post offers a line mode browser that runs on almost anything17
  9. Pellow's first period on the WWW project ends5
  10. General release of www on CERN's central machines9
  11. Line mode browser released to a limited audience at CERN1
  12. Line mode and NeXT browsers can be demonstrated by Christmas9
  13. The WWW proposal pencils in NP for the dumb-terminal browser work7
  14. Technical student Nicola Pellow joins and starts the line-mode browser1

What it means for your website

The line-mode browser is a reminder that a web page is text first. Pellow’s program could show pages to anyone with a basic terminal because it needed nothing more than lines of text and numbered links.310 The same idea still helps a small business site reach every visitor, whatever device or assistive technology they use.

  • Put key facts in text, not only in images. The line-mode browser could not show images at all.11 Type your phone number, hours, prices and service area as real words on the page, not only inside photos or graphics, so they reach every visitor and every program that reads your site as text. The WCAG guidelines and our glossary entry on web accessibility explain what else helps.
  • Use real headings and real links. A 1992 paper on the web noted that a dumb terminal browser might show headings in capital letters where a graphical browser used a different font.13 That only works when headings are marked up as headings. Use your builder’s heading styles rather than large bold text, and write link text that makes sense on its own.
  • Check what is left without styling. The 2013 team built its simulator so that anyone could point it at modern websites.24 If your main message, contact details and menu still make sense as plain text, the structure of your pages is sound.
  • Build for the screens people have. The line-mode browser existed because few people had a NeXT computer.8 Today the common screen is a phone, which is why responsive design matters. Test every new page on a phone before you publish it.

Our guide to how a website works explains how a browser turns your pages’ HTML into what visitors see.

See also

References

  1. A Little History of the World Wide Web (created circa 1995 by Robert Cailliau). W3C. accessed October 22, 2026.
  2. Frequently asked questions by the Press. Tim Berners-Lee, W3C. accessed October 22, 2026.
  3. Line Mode Browser (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  4. WWW project status (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  5. People involved in the WorldWideWeb project (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  6. SAMBA: Macintosh Status (project status page). W3C history archive. accessed October 22, 2026.
  7. WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project. Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, CERN, via W3C. 1990-11-12. accessed October 22, 2026.
  8. A short history of the Web. CERN. accessed October 22, 2026.
  9. History to date (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  10. Line Mode Browser quick guide (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  11. Why bring back the line-mode browser? (Dan Noyes). CERN. 2013-09-19. accessed October 22, 2026.
  12. Call for developers to recreate the line-mode browser (Restoring the first website project). CERN. 2013. accessed October 22, 2026.
  13. The world-wide web (T.J. Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau and J.-F. Groff), Computer Networks and ISDN Systems 25 (1992), pp. 454-459. North-Holland; copy hosted by Stanford University. 1992. accessed October 22, 2026.
  14. Recreating one of the web's first browsers. CERN. 2013. accessed October 22, 2026.
  15. Line Mode Browser status (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  16. Line Mode Browser 2013. CERN. accessed October 22, 2026.
  17. Re: Qualifiers on Hypertext links… (alt.hypertext post, archived). Tim Berners-Lee, via W3C. 1991-08-06. accessed October 22, 2026.
  18. History (WorldWideWeb NeXT application rebuild). CERN. accessed October 22, 2026.
  19. Macintosh Browser Status (November 1992 snapshot of the first website). W3C history archive. 1992-11-03. accessed October 22, 2026.
  20. People who have contributed to the World Wide Web project. W3C. 1994-05. accessed October 22, 2026.
  21. Line Mode Browser. W3C. 1998-05-04. accessed October 22, 2026.
  22. Ten Years Public Domain for the Original Web Software (World-Wide Web: Made at CERN). CERN. 2003-04-30. accessed October 22, 2026.
  23. The ghost of browsers past (Jeremy Keith). adactio.com. 2013-09-25. accessed October 22, 2026.
  24. Making of LMB 2013. CERN. 2013. accessed October 22, 2026.

Web Building Encyclopedia. First published October 22, 2026. Last reviewed October 22, 2026. Every fact on this page is linked to a source we opened. Spotted an error? Write to [email protected].