Jonty Wareing Jonty

YouTube watch page and Me at the zoo Reconstruction

Documentation of the reconstruction of YouTube watch page for "Me at the zoo" — the platform's very first upload. Based on the earliest Wayback Machine snapshot from 8 December 2006, including a video file from Jawed Karim. Work undertaken by Matteo Loglio of oio in collaboration with Anna Mladentseva, V&A conservation, April 2025—February 2026.

Directory Structure

Folder/File	Description
`me at the zoo files/`	Main folder containing all web assets
`me at the zoo files/period code/`	Original archived HTML and web assets (untouched source)

Configuration Guide: Comments & Related Videos

This document outlines the locations and procedures for hiding user comments and related videos in index.html.

Section Locations

Section	Line Range	Identifier
Comments	719 - 1095	`id="commentsDiv"`
Related Videos	1207 - 1751	`id="exRelatedDiv"`

Me at the zoo - 2025 restoration

Overview

This document outlines the restoration of the original YouTube page for Me at the zoo, the platform’s very first upload. It's a combination of three elements:

index.html: the web page. it's based on the earliest archived version available, captured on December 12, 2006 at 08:31:25, by the Web Archive. The original page has been modified to ensure it displays and functions correctly in modern 2025 browsers. The original code and structure are preserved wherever possible, and only essential modifications have been made for compatibility. All changes are documented and reversible, and a copy of the unmodified original page is included for reference.
player2.swf: the original SWF from 2006, also archived by the Web Archive here. This was left untouched. It's emulated through a Rust-based WASM emulator called Ruffle.
video.flv: the original video, in .flv format. It was sourced from an hard drive from th


	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">




	<html>

	<!-- machid: 91 -->
	<head>

	import sys

	lines = sys.stdin.readlines()
	lines.sort(reverse = ('-r' in sys.argv))
	print ''.join(lines)

	import sys

	def process_lines(lines):
	for index, line in enumerate(lines):
	last_line = lines[index - 1]
	if line != last_line:
	sys.stdout.write(line)

	process_lines(sys.stdin.readlines())

	def just_one_kind_of_response?(item, controller)

	case controller
	when 'actions'
	if item.comments.blank? \|\| item.suggestions.blank?
	return true
	end

	when 'thoughts'
	if item.comments.blank? \|\| item.suggestions.blank?

	#!/usr/bin/python
	import sys

	labels = []
	values = []

	for line in sys.stdin:
	bits = line.strip().split(' ')
	value = bits.pop(0)
	label = ' '.join(bits)