Web, and they agreed to let us use their dial-in service so we could call the computer back at CERN.

The next challenge was to get the Swiss modem we had brought to work with the American electrical system. We bought a power adapter that would take 110 volts (rather than the Swiss 220 volts). Of course it didn't have the right little plug to connect to the modem. We had to take the modem apart, borrow a solder-ing gun from the hotel (Robert was rightly proud of this feat!), and wire it up directly. Robert got everything connected, and it worked.

We didn't have real Internet connectivity, just a dial-in Unix login, so we could show only the graphic World Wide Web program working on local data. Nonetheless, we could demonstrate the line-mode browser working live. We were the only people at the entire conference doing any kind of connectivity. The wall of the demo room held project titles above each booth, and only one of them had any reference to the World Wide Web—ours.

At the same conference two years later, on the equivalent wall, every project on display would have something to do with the Web.