Origins
The original Gopher system was released in late spring of 1991 by Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota. Its central goals were, as stated in RFC 1436:
- A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users.
- A simple syntax.
- A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively.
- Extending the file system metaphor, such as searches.
Gopher combines document hierarchies with collections of services, including WAIS, the Archie and Veronica search engines, and gateways to other information systems such as FTP and Usenet.
The general interest in Campus-Wide Information Systems (CWISs) in higher education at the time, and the ease with which a Gopher server could be set up to create an instant CWIS with links to other sites' online directories and resources were the factors contributing to Gopher's rapid adoption. By 1992, the standard method of locating someone's e-mail address was to find their organization's CCSO nameserver entry in Gopher, and query the nameserver.
The name was coined by Anklesaria as a play off of several meanings of the word "gopher." The University of Minnesota mascot is the gopher, a gofer (same sound) is an assistant who "goes for" things, and a gopher burrows through the ground to reach a desired location.
Read more about this topic: Gopher (protocol)
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