[ih] We can hang up now, it's all done.

[Dave CROCKER]

Larry Press wrote:
>> But I am sad to see no mention of Gopher and Archie (and hytelnet) which 
> Don't forget Veronica and Jughead.
>> I believe had to have been the beginnings of the World Wide Web.
> 
> Where does anything begin?  Hypertext was preceded by linear text and 
> was foreshadowed in Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think." Folks 
> like Ted Nelson and Ben Shneiderman built tools (TIES) and popularized 
> the idea.  As far as I know, gopher was first on the Net, 

I usually characterize gopher as the way-station between anonymous FTP and the 
web.  In other words, an open-access means of publishing things.

Bush did a mind-altering think-piece.  Nelson did some core research. 
Engelbart[1] produced a running service that was relied on for doing on-going 
work.  All of these fed into the Web and office tools we now use, whether the 
later developers knew it or not.

In terms of a distributed, running open-access publication service on the Net, 
Anonymous FTP was the beginning of the Web.

Archie should probably be credited as the first of the search services, in 
parallel to the publishing service.



Larry Press wrote:
 >> * 1978: The first bulletin board system
 >> This may be technically true but it ignores the real point that in
 >> 1973 the Institute for the Future had its FORUM system on ARPANET,
...
 > EIES from New Jersey Institute of Technology also existed in the mid 1970s.


EIES and Forum were separate follow-on efforts, after the first remote 
conferencing system was developed to assist in management of the 1972 gas crisis.


d/

[1] Remember that the public demonstration of Engelbart's work was 1968. My 
understanding is that most of his work from then to the early 70s was porting to 
a new platform, and refining.

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net