Although it’s impossible to say for sure if their photo was, in fact, the very first to be posted online, it was an early step in the transformation of a communication system used by scientists into the internet we know today.

A British newspaper interviewed some of the group’s members 20 years after the picture was taken. “It is quite funny that now with Facebook and blogging that sort of picture is common place on the Web,” one said. “It was just girls being girls. We were asked to ‘strike a pose’ and we did.”

Lauren Hard contributed reporting.

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