July 18 – Les Horribles Cernettes Make a WWW Debut

nPosted on July 18, 2019

Key Points

nParticle physicists work with the deepest mysteries of the universe – and most of them probably aren’t doing it “for the money.” They love their work, I’d guess. They hunger for answers to HUGE questions about TEENSY things and amazingly HIGH energy.

nThe European Organization for Nuclear Research, which is called CERN (based on the original name, in French), operates the largest particle physics lab in the world and employees a lot of particle physicists. But of course CERN also has to hire some other people. Someone needs to take out the trash and clean the bathrooms, for example. CERN needs data analysts, managers, writers, graphic artists, clerks, human resource personnel…and on and on and on!

One thing particle physicists love to do is to smash and crash teensy particles together to try to detect even smaller particles. To do this, they need particle accelerators that get particles moving close to the speed of light! Most of these particle accelerators are also colliders (that’s where the smashing and crashing come in!). The most famous of CERN’s colliders is the Large Hadron Collider.

nWell, once upon a time, almost 30 years ago, a woman named Michele de Gannaro worked for CERN as a graphic designer. Her partner was a nuclear physicist, and one time during a CERN festival, de Gannaro stepped onto a stage and sang a supposedly-sad-but-really-funny song about how lonely it was to be the girlfriend of a physicist.

nThat song was such a hit that de Gannaro and others ended up forming a group. The music was doo-wop in style, but the group was considered a parody pop group – because all the lyrics were intent on making people laugh.

nThe group name – The Horrible CERN Girls, but in French – was created to have the same initials as the Large Hadron Collider. The group is billed as “the one and only High Energy Rock Band” – because, of course, CERN deals with high-energy physics.

nI was surprised to find out that a photo of Les Horribles Cernettes – this picture:

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– was the very first photograph of a band and one of the first photos ever published on the World Wide Web. How, I wondered, did that come about?

nWell, it turns out that CERN was the birthplace of the World Wide Web! Inventor Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser in 1990 while working there, and the WWW was first released to other research institutions in and later to the general public in 1991.

nAnd in 1992, right after the band played in another CERN festival, Berners-Lee asked them for some scanned photos to put onto the information system he’d just invented.

nThe photo was taken on this date in 1992 – and I’m not sure exactly when in 1992 it was uploaded to the WWW, nor when it was first clicked, but it’s amazing that the first band to be there was NOT someone mongo-famous like the Beatles…