Cello (1993)

Cello is a forgotten web browser. That's a shame, because it was perhaps one of the most important browsers. Ever.

Why? Because Cello was the first Windows browser. Released on June 8th, 1993, Cello, which was designed by Thomas R. Bruce (http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/faculty/bio.cfm?id=188) at the Cornell Law School. He created it so ambulance-chasers...err, lawyers...could access the Internet. Up to that point, all browsers were not Windows-compatible. And most lawyers used Windows 3.1.

So Mr. Bruce created Cello. Initially, it was designed by lawyers for lawyers. But, because Windows OS usage and the popularity of the Internet were slowly growing, it soon became one of the first popular browsers.

On April 16th, 1994, Cello 1.01a was released in the middle of a period of Cello popularity. But it proved to be the final version of the browser.

Mosaic came out soon afterwards. It soon dominated in the early stages of the browser wars. Cello was one of the first casualties.

I downloaded a copy of it today. You can get it at http://browsers-us.mirrors.zensoft.net/cello/16bit/1.01a/cello.zip (this is a US-based mirror site), and at least try to run it. But it is amazingly primitive, and the only pages I've been able to view with it are the Cello home page and the Cello FAQ. I can get it to connect to the Internet, but modern web pages are way too advanced for it. They give me error messages when I try to load them.

That sucks. Cello is still an interesting conversation piece, though.