[ih] Copy of first web page discovered

[Dave Crocker]

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...)


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.

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

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...


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net