[LINK] RFC: The Web in Oz, 1992-94

[linda rouse]

Hi Roger
FWIW: Not the first but... I remember demonstrating Coombsweb 
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ in my Internet training courses in the mid 
nineties and lo, I go there today and find that it closed down in Jan of 
this year:

"The Coombsweb (including its all subsidiary (and/or sister) pages on 
"coombs.anu.edu.au" server) has permanently ceased its publishing 
operations on Tuesday 25th January 2011"

"Seventeen years ago, at the time of its launch (25 Jan 1994) Coombsweb 
was 2nd WWW site at the ANU, the 5th site in Australia and the 850th WWW 
server in the world. Currently the Internet comprises over 255.2 million 
Web servers [as at 25 Jan 2011]."

regards
Linda

>> On 14/12/11 16:22, Roger Clarke wrote:
>>> I'm trying to finalise my long-intended history of the first couple
>>> of years of 'the Web in Oz' ...
>>
>> The Canberra Branch of the Australian Computer Society set up a dial up
>> service for members in 1993. This was expanded to a national service in
>> 1995. It was the intuitive of Mr. Peter Talty, Chairman of the ACS
>> Canberra Branch. Details are in "The ACS-link Project - a Case Study",
>> Peter Talty BA MACS, ACS Canberra Branch Conference: MULITNET'95:
>> http://www.tomw.net.au/cn95pt1.html
>>
>> This provided such miraculous services as:
>>
>> * Easy-to-use menu access to thousands of "Gopher" information
>> services,
>> * On-line searches of millions of documents using the Wide Area
>> Information Service,
>> * Access to millions of files through File Transfer Protocol,
>> * Interactive "Telnet" access to tens of thousands of computer
>> services.
>>
>> See the launch announcement: http://www.tomw.net.au/irc/irc12c.html
>>
>> You will note no mention of the web.
>>
>> This was later replaced with a national service "ACS-link":
>> http://groups.google.com/group/aus.general/browse_thread/thread/ab58eed87
>> 421ac0b/f621ebd60d318b9a?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22australian+computer+society%
>> 22+dialup+canberra&pli=1
>>
>> ACS-link (Australian Computer Society Inc.)
>> Ph: (02) 211 5855
>> Fx: (02) 281 1208
>> E-mail: i... at acs.org.au
>> Features: e-mail, conferencing, full range Internet services, ACS
>> Information services (detailed libraries
>> incl. IT Practitioners Handbook) SLIP, PPP, IRC, Messenger;
>> Costs: Once only service connection fee of $50 for ACS members only (5
>> hours peak time usage or 10 hours non-peak usage free of network
>> charges).
>>
>> This service was important as it exposed pubic servants in Canberra, and
>> IT professionals across Australia, to the practicalities of the
>> Internet. Myself and other ACS members demonstrated the Internet and the
>> web at ACS meetings and conferences.
>>
>> As an example, on 21 July 1994 I presented my first web page to the
>> Canberra branch meeting, "HI-TECH TOURIST ON THE EUROPEAN INFORMATION
>> HIGHWAY: and Recent Developments on the Global Information
>> Infrastructure": http://www.tomw.net.au/hitech.html
>>
>> You will notice my web pages lacked back-links from the subsidiary
>> pages, as I did not know how to do them at the time. Later I went on a
>> web course at the ANU run by Tony Barry and with that knowledge set up
>> the Defence department's home page:
>> http://www.acs.org.au/president/1998/past/dodweb.htm
>>
>> I created official departmental files for Internet and web policy at the
>> Defence Department in the mid 1990s and placed copies of all the
>> paperwork from internal and inter-departmental meetings I attended on
>> the topics on file (with folio numbers on each page). Assuming these
>> have not been destroyed, they should now be available for research
>> purposes: http://www.defence.gov.au/foi/contacts.htm
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
>> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
>> Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
>> Legislation
>>
>> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
>> Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
>
>

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