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

[Peter Bowditch]

I've still got an ACS-Link t-shirt somewhere.

> 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/


-- 
Peter Bowditch
The Millenium Project - http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles
I'm @RatbagsDotCom on Twitter