What was the name of the first web server software?

The first web server software was CERN httpd.

Tim Berners-Lee developed CERN httpd at CERN from 1990 onward while creating the World Wide Web. The software ran on his NeXT computer and served the first website, hosted at info.cern.ch. Its name refers to an HTTP daemon, the background program that receives web requests and returns resources.

CERN httpd was written in C and initially targeted Unix systems. Its source code became publicly available in 1991, helping universities and research institutions install web servers of their own. Later versions added capabilities such as proxying, caching, password protection, forms, and interfaces for server-side scripts.

The project was eventually continued by the World Wide Web Consortium and was also called W3C httpd. Development ended after version 3.0A in 1996, with Jigsaw becoming its successor. Apache, Nginx, and Microsoft Internet Information Services became influential later; none was the first web server software.