Forgot your password?
Cyhist Feb 12, 1997 A
Document Actions
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:21:54 +0000
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: John Line <jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: CM> Re: First Search Engine.
In-Reply-To: <E0vuXYy-00003f-00@taurus.cus.cam.ac.uk> from "Automatic digest
processor" at Feb 12, 97 00:35:07 am
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
I mentioned the veronica search engine for gopher servers, and Scott McNulty <smcnulty@carl.org> asked
>There is an Archie and a Veronica. Is there a Jughead and Betty? Which came first?
I don't recall a Betty, but there was a jughead - an indexer and search engine for searching within a single gopher server. My copy is of V1.0.1, released 29 June 1994, but the jughead.changes file lists details of versions as far back as 0.2_beta release 25 March 1993. "beta" was dropped from the version with version 0.7 on 8 May 1993; 1.0 was released 29 June 1994 (same day as 1.0.1 :-) but "of course" it's common for Internet-related programs to be stable and widely used while nominally still beta-test releases and/or with version numbers way below 1.0.
The About.jughead file starts by noting
" Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display
jughead head can act as a search engine on a prebuilt table that allows searching through menus, or can create a linear view of menu space. When running jughead you can specify what part of gopherspace you want search tables built or a linear view thereof."
I can't be specific about archie; the original (as far as I know) version was part of the Prospero distributed file system and building the archie client required you to build the whole of Prospero, which was (or seemed to me at the time) non-trivial. So I used an independently-developed client that had been written in less than a thousand lines of Perl. Version 3.8 of Perl archie was dated 12 Aug 1991. I don't have a copy of Prospero, so I can't check its change log for dates, though it still seems to be available (in /pub/prospero on prospero.isi.edu) along with papers about it, etc. Transatlantic FTP is so slow at the moment I can't fetch a copy to check dates in the source kit, but the definitive document about the origins of Prospero appears to be a 1992 PhD thesis.
A document "archie - An Electronic Directory Service for the Internet" by Peter Deutsch of McGill University notes
=====
...
The huge size (and continued rapid growth) of the Internet offer a particular challenge to systems designers and service providers in this new environment. Before a user can effectively exploit any of the services offered by the Internet community the user must be aware of both the existence of the service and the host or hosts on which it is available. Adequately addressing this "resource discovery problem" is a central challenge for both service providers and users wishing to capitalize on the possibilities of the Internet.
...
What is the archie service?
----------------------------
The archie service is a collection of resource discovery tools that together provide an electronic directory service for locating information in an Internet environment. Originally created to track the contents of anonymous ftp archive sites, the archie service is now being expanded to include a variety of other on-line directories and resource listings.
...
The archie Service Today
--------------------------
Currently, archie tracks the contents of over 800 anonymous ftp archive sites containing some 1,000,000 files throughout the Internet. Collectively, these files represent well over 50 Gigabytes (50,000,000,000 bytes) of information, with additional information being added daily. Anonymous ftp archive sites offer software, data and other information that can be copied and used without charge by anyone with connection to the Internet.
The archie server automatically updates the listing information from each site about once a month, ensuring users that the information they receive is reasonably timely, without imposing an undue load on the archive sites or network bandwidth.
...
=====
John Line
--
John Line - Cambridge University Computing Service, Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England. Internet: jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk Phone: +44 1223 334708 FAX: +44 1223 334679
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU>
From: John Line <jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk>
Subject: CM> Re: First Search Engine.
In-Reply-To: <E0vuXYy-00003f-00@taurus.cus.cam.ac.uk> from "Automatic digest
processor" at Feb 12, 97 00:35:07 am
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
I mentioned the veronica search engine for gopher servers, and Scott McNulty <smcnulty@carl.org> asked
>There is an Archie and a Veronica. Is there a Jughead and Betty? Which came first?
I don't recall a Betty, but there was a jughead - an indexer and search engine for searching within a single gopher server. My copy is of V1.0.1, released 29 June 1994, but the jughead.changes file lists details of versions as far back as 0.2_beta release 25 March 1993. "beta" was dropped from the version with version 0.7 on 8 May 1993; 1.0 was released 29 June 1994 (same day as 1.0.1 :-) but "of course" it's common for Internet-related programs to be stable and widely used while nominally still beta-test releases and/or with version numbers way below 1.0.
The About.jughead file starts by noting
" Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display
jughead head can act as a search engine on a prebuilt table that allows searching through menus, or can create a linear view of menu space. When running jughead you can specify what part of gopherspace you want search tables built or a linear view thereof."
I can't be specific about archie; the original (as far as I know) version was part of the Prospero distributed file system and building the archie client required you to build the whole of Prospero, which was (or seemed to me at the time) non-trivial. So I used an independently-developed client that had been written in less than a thousand lines of Perl. Version 3.8 of Perl archie was dated 12 Aug 1991. I don't have a copy of Prospero, so I can't check its change log for dates, though it still seems to be available (in /pub/prospero on prospero.isi.edu) along with papers about it, etc. Transatlantic FTP is so slow at the moment I can't fetch a copy to check dates in the source kit, but the definitive document about the origins of Prospero appears to be a 1992 PhD thesis.
A document "archie - An Electronic Directory Service for the Internet" by Peter Deutsch of McGill University notes
=====
...
The huge size (and continued rapid growth) of the Internet offer a particular challenge to systems designers and service providers in this new environment. Before a user can effectively exploit any of the services offered by the Internet community the user must be aware of both the existence of the service and the host or hosts on which it is available. Adequately addressing this "resource discovery problem" is a central challenge for both service providers and users wishing to capitalize on the possibilities of the Internet.
...
What is the archie service?
----------------------------
The archie service is a collection of resource discovery tools that together provide an electronic directory service for locating information in an Internet environment. Originally created to track the contents of anonymous ftp archive sites, the archie service is now being expanded to include a variety of other on-line directories and resource listings.
...
The archie Service Today
--------------------------
Currently, archie tracks the contents of over 800 anonymous ftp archive sites containing some 1,000,000 files throughout the Internet. Collectively, these files represent well over 50 Gigabytes (50,000,000,000 bytes) of information, with additional information being added daily. Anonymous ftp archive sites offer software, data and other information that can be copied and used without charge by anyone with connection to the Internet.
The archie server automatically updates the listing information from each site about once a month, ensuring users that the information they receive is reasonably timely, without imposing an undue load on the archive sites or network bandwidth.
...
=====
John Line
--
John Line - Cambridge University Computing Service, Computer Laboratory,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QG, England. Internet: jml4@cus.cam.ac.uk Phone: +44 1223 334708 FAX: +44 1223 334679
______________________________________________________________________
