London museum acquires YouTube’s first-ever video and, in doing so, formally recognises the moment online culture began to shift. The Victoria and Albert Museum has added the earliest video ever uploaded to YouTube to its permanent collection, placing a once-casual internet clip inside one of the world’s most respected design institutions.
The acquisition centres on “Me at the zoo,” the first upload to YouTube, created by co-founder Jawed Karim.
The video is now on display in the Design 1900 to Now gallery at the museum’s South Kensington site. Visitors encounter not just the clip itself, but a reconstructed early YouTube watch page designed to mirror how the platform looked in late 2006.
Originally posted on April 23, 2005, the 19 second clip shows Karim, then 25, standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. In the video he casually remarks, “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really really really long trunks.”
What began as a simple test upload has since gathered more than 382 million views and over 18 million likes. Its tone is informal, unscripted and unpolished. That simplicity is precisely what makes it historic.
According to museum officials, the V and A’s digital conservation team spent 18 months recreating YouTube as it appeared on December 8, 2006, the earliest fully documented version of the platform. The reconstruction was carried out in collaboration with YouTube’s user experience team and London based interaction design studio oio.
The goal was accuracy. Fonts, layout structure, video placement, comment styling and navigation elements were rebuilt to reflect the early web 2.0 environment. The result is not nostalgia. It is documentation.
The reconstructed watch page is exhibited at V and A South Kensington. A companion display at V and A East Storehouse in Stratford explains the technical process behind rebuilding the interface and preserving early digital design.
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief executive, said the reconstruction gives visitors a way to revisit the platform’s beginnings and consider how dramatically online video has transformed media consumption. Corinna Gardner, senior curator of design and digital at the museum, described the exhibit as a defining moment in web 2.0 history and digital design culture.
When a design museum collects a digital interface, it signals something larger than internet nostalgia. It recognises user experience design, platform architecture and participatory culture as legitimate subjects of preservation.
More than two decades after its launch, YouTube remains one of the most influential platforms in global media. Museums, galleries and cultural institutions now rely on it to reach audiences far beyond their physical walls. The same platform that once hosted a 19 second clip in front of zoo elephants now shapes careers, politics, education and entertainment worldwide.
By acquiring YouTube’s first video and reconstructing its early interface, the Victoria and Albert Museum has archived the moment the internet stopped being static and started becoming social.
