[ih] Copy of first web page discovered

[John Day]

At 1:17 PM +0200 5/31/13, Dave Crocker wrote:
>On 5/31/2013 12:54 PM, John Day wrote:
>>And of course, anonymous FTP started almost immediately after FTP was
>>available and as for accessing the NIC, there was TNLS as you say, but
>
>I believe was using TNLS from UCLA in 1971, for fun.  Even wrote a 
>batch PL/1 program for an IBM 360/91 that emulated the NLS 
>formatting commands...
>
>>also the NLS on an IMLAC.  That would be the first use of hypertext over
>>the 'Net.
>
>The only device driver I ever wrote was for loading the DNLS 
>front-end into the imlac at UCLA, from the CS department Sigma 7 SEX 
>system.  I think we were their first remote user, but that's 
>probably wrong.  I suspect a variety of sites started using it at 
>the same time.
>
>The DNLS cursor bounced all over the place and I suggested adding 
>damping code and Charles Irby all but blew up at me, noting that 
>they already had /masses/ of damping code and couldn't get the damn 
>thing under control.  (sorry for the riff...)
>

A friend of mine has pieces of our IMLAC.  Yea, I remember it was a 
bit iffy to use.  ;-)  But they were pushing the envelope in a lot of 
places then.

>FWIW, I do not recall the Engelbart crew using Ted Nelson's term 
>'hypertext'.  But I do seem to recall that what we now call URLs 
>were called 'links' on the NLS system.
>
>Anyhow, again, I think the a discussion of the arc of "publishing" 
>over the net wouldn't qualify the NLS stuff, since it was all 
>centralized; it wasn't a distributed set of servers; we just 
>telneted to it, or used the DNLS front-end to it, much in the style 
>of webmail today.  To me, it's the distribution of document storage 
>and publication-oriented retrieval that defines the arc.

Of course, you are right.  Although I would offer that was as much a 
problem of the limits of the technology at the time and the funding. 
Of course, given that the idea of the ARPANET was "resource sharing" 
we were suppose to use NLS there and avoid replicating it.

The elements to distribute it were all there. It just wasn't done. 
Although NSW might qualify.

>
>That would be AnonFTP as the first, I believe.  Incredibly ugly in 
>UX terms, but quite effective.

Yea, that appeared pretty quickly.

>
>The NLS system definitely defines the start of document that we have 
>today for the web.  But it didn't provide the publication mechanism 
>that we have.
>
>On the other hand, the combination of NLS and AnonFTP was a fair 
>rough approximation...

I know the ideas were being batted around.  If the funding had been 
there and the hardware up to it, it would have been done.  Did you 
ever go in the machine room at SRI to see how NLS really worked?!  ;-)

Take care,
John

>
>
>d/
>
>--
>Dave Crocker
>Brandenburg InternetWorking
>bbiw.net