[ih] Fwd: Re: anybody know the history of the group at NCSA that developed Mosaic & HTTPd?

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Mon Mar 12 17:50:16 PDT 2018


Actually, speed doesn't matter all that much - but his contact info is 
online, so I'll just reach out.  Thanks guys!

On 3/12/18 3:52 PM, Vint Cerf wrote:
> I am with Brian on this. Maybe you should contact Larry Smarr? he 
> headed NCSA at the time.
> Of course the 20-20 back vision may prove to be a distorted view of 
> history.
>
> I will see Larry in the next month or so but sounds like you'd like a 
> more immediate response?
>
> v
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 3:17 PM, Brian E Carpenter 
> <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com <mailto:brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 13/03/2018 05:05, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>     > Thanks to all who've provided pointers - but, unfortunately, the
>     oral
>     > and written histories are pretty vague about the NCSA organization &
>     > players - which is what I'm really trying to uncover.
>     >
>     > I'm trying to understand the organizational histories & climates
>     that
>     > spawned the web - and that involves the managers, not just the
>     workers.
>
>     The managers? Most of them had no idea. At CERN, Mike Sendall (Tim's
>     group leader) and David Williams (deputy division leader, later the
>     actual division leader) both stated later that their main
>     contribution to
>     the web was not stopping the project, which was unfunded and
>     unauthorised.
>     Somebody paid for a couple of NeXts but I'm pretty sure that was for
>     some other project. Please read the Gilles and Cailliau book for
>     details.
>
>     The first server in the US was set up by Paul Kunz at SLAC. As far
>     as I
>     know he did it because he wanted to, not because anybody approved it.
>     That was ceratinly Paul's style. I believe the second server in
>     the US was
>     set up by David Martin at Fermilab. Ask him (he's at Argonne now,
>     dem at alcf.anl.gov <mailto:dem at alcf.anl.gov>).
>
>     A management culture of not interfering with smart people was the key.
>     Classical skunk works.
>
>     > How we got from public ftp archives, to MIT Techinfo, to gopher, to
>     > TBL's early web - the organizational motivations/environmnts
>     that led to
>     > the initial development of each, their promulgation, their eventual
>     > subsumption by today's web.
>     >
>     > A lot of it's pretty well documented, and I have some personal
>     knowledge
>     > of some of the people & events, but the events at NCSA are less
>     > visible.  IMHO, if it had not been for Mosaic and the NCSA
>     HTTPd, the
>     > HTTP/HTML web would have eventually gone the way of gopher,
>     replaced by
>     > something even newer and shinier.
>
>     In 1992, Tim knew that a good browser was the key and he worked on
>     stimulating
>     that. If it hadn't been Mosaic in late 1992, it would have been
>     something else
>     in 1993, I think. Single-ended hyperlinks really provided a more
>     powerful
>     paradigm than gopher, WAIS or Archie which were the main alternatives.
>
>     > Andreessen, Bina, and McCool took the
>     > web from laboratory prototype to "industrial strength."  I'd kind of
>     > like to understand the environment in which that happened.
>
>     The Jim Clark book answers that. It's rather self-serving, but it
>     was because
>     Jim was an experienced entrepreneur and ran into Andreesen that
>     Netscape
>     became "industrial". NSCA management was a hindrance, not a help. They
>     didn't get out of the way.
>
>     > By analogy.  Licklider set the stage for lots of things - both
>     at BBN,
>     > and at ARPA - paving the way for lots of things.
>
>     I'm not sure the analogy holds. NCSA doesn't seem to have operated
>     as a skunk works, and they viewed networking as a form of plumbing.
>     I get the feeling that Mosaic was a bit of an outlier in their
>     history;
>     NSFnet and bandwidth was the main story.
>
>     1997 interview with Larry Smarr: https://vimeo.com/6982439
>
>         Brian
>
>     > We all know the story
>     > of Ray Tomlinson hacking together the first ARPANET email.  The
>     > environment at BBN that set the stage - Div. 6, the various
>     > personalities - are discussed in "Where Hackers Stay up Late"
>     and some
>     > of the history that Dave Walden has assembled), less is known
>     about the
>     > next few months, when folks like Ken Pogran implemented mail
>     systems for
>     > various O/S environments.
>     >
>     > Has anybody done this kind of historical treatment of NCSA?
>     (There's a
>     > timeline on their web site, from their 30th anniversary - but
>     it's all
>     > kind of sketchy.)
>     >
>     > Cheers,
>     >
>     > Miles
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On 3/10/18 8:38 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>     >> I see that Marc did an oral history interview as early as 1995:
>     >> http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/ma1.html
>     <http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/ma1.html>
>     >> He seems to have been careful at that time not to be too frank
>     about NCSA management.
>     >>
>     >> Also he was interviewed for this (as well as Vint):
>     >> https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/07/internet200807
>     <https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/07/internet200807>
>     >>
>     >> In fact a Google search for "oral history" "marc andreessen"
>     finds a whole lot.
>     >>
>     >> Regards
>     >>     Brian
>     >>
>     >> On 11/03/2018 13:51, Vint Cerf wrote:
>     >>> you should talk to Marc! The effort was not sanctioned as an
>     NCSA project
>     >>> any more than was the WWW at CERN. It was a kind of skunkworks
>     project that
>     >>> really got a lot of attention when it was released. Jim Clark,
>     then CEO of
>     >>> Silicon Graphics, came to NCSA and persuaded Marc Andreessen
>     and Eric Bina
>     >>> (and others?) to come to Silicon Valley to start Netscape
>     Communications in
>     >>> 1994.
>     >>>
>     >>> vint
>     >>>
>     >>>
>     >>> On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 7:17 PM, Miles Fidelman
>     <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>>
>     >>> wrote:
>     >>>
>     >>>> Hi Folks,
>     >>>>
>     >>>> I'm wondering - does anybody here know the history of the
>     group at NCSA
>     >>>> that spawned Mosaic and httpd - like where it fit on the
>     organization
>     >>>> chart, who ran it, who Andreessen, Bina, and McCool actually
>     worked for?
>     >>>>
>     >>>> I'm trying to understand the environment that spawned the
>     enabled the
>     >>>> folks to take Berners-Lee's basic stuff, and make it ready
>     for prime
>     >>>> time, so to speak.
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Any insights?
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Thanks,
>     >>>>
>     >>>> Miles Fidelman
>     >>>>
>     >>>> --
>     >>>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>     >>>> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>     >>>>
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-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

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