Violinist Joshua Bell at D.C. Metro Station and the Chain Email

Famous Violinist Joshua Bell performs at the Washington D.C. Metro subway incognito.

A chain email on Joshua Bell's performance at L'Enfant's Plaza Metro station lives on. 

Since early 2007, a chain email has proliferated about American virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell performing incognito at Washington D.C. Metro station. The message is a lesson on our perception, taste, and attitude.

The latest from this chain email I got was 20th June 2025. A friend meant well in sending it, although I've known about it all along. 

The email forward claims that violinist Joshua Bell performed incognito at a metro station in Washington D.C. playing on a violin worth millions of dollars but his performance received very little interest from passersby.

Joshua Bell's 'Stop and Hear the Music' metro experiment | The Washington Post. Youtube, uploaded by Washington Post. Accessed December 9, 2020.  

Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web (WWW)

Science / Inventors Datebook

Inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the WWW

The internet has become an enormous network linking billions of computers worldwide. It came a long way when it began as a small operation the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Internet's Early Years

The Internet came about in the early 1960s. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was the birthplace of the Internet. That time, dial-up phone lines were used to form the basis of Internet connections. In the mid-60s, the first real wide-area connection came through when a computer at the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) eventually connected with a California computer. With the inadequacy of the telephone's lines, the concept of packet switching was began, giving birth to the ARPANET in 1966.