Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind. He then proposed the idea of a virtually limitless, fast, reliable, extensible, associative memory storage and retrieval system. He named this device a memex. But there is a long list of great minds that have given us the information system we now use today. This article illustrates some of them. Here is the History of the Search Engine:
Ted Nelson
Ted Nelson created Project Xanadu in 1960 and coined the term hypertext in 1963. His goal with Project Xanadu was to create a computer network with a simple user interface that solved many social problems like attribution. While Teds project Xandadu, for reasons unknown, never really took off much of the inspiration to create the WWW came from Teds work.
George Salton
George Salton was the father of modern search technology. He died in August of 1995. His teams at Harvard and Cornell developed the Saltons Magic Automatic Retriever of Text otherwise known as the SMART informational retrieval system. It included important concepts like the vector space model, Inverse Document Frequency (IDF), Term Frequency (TF), term discrimination values, and relevancy feedback mechanisms. His book A theory of indexing explains many of his tests. Search today is still based on much of his theories. History of the search engine uses some of the same techniques even today.
Alan Emtage
In 1990 a student at McGill University in Montreal, by the name of Alan Emtage created Archie; the first search engine. It was invented to index FTP archives, allowing people to quickly access specific files. Archie users could utilize Archies services through a variety of methods including e-mail queries, teleneting directly to a server, and eventually through the World Wide Web interfaces. Archie only indexed computer files. With Archie, Alan Emtage helped to solve the data scatter problem. Originally, it was to be named archives but was changed to Archie for short.
Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill
Archie gained such popularity that in 1991 Paul Linder and Mark P. McCahill created a text based information browsing system that uses a menu-driven interface to pull information from across the globe to the users computer. Named for the Golden Gophers mascot at the University of Minnesota, The name is fitting, because Gopher tunnels through other Gophers located in computers around the world, arranging data in a hierarchical series of menus, which users can search for specific topics.
Tim Burners-Lee
Up until 1991 until there was no World Wide Web. The main method of sharing information was via FTP. Tim Berners-Lee wanted to join hypertext with the internet. He used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire (a prototype created with help from Robert Cailliau) to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and built the first web browser and editor, called WorldWideWeb, and developed on NeXTSTEP. He then created the first Web server called httpd, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon. The first Web site built was at: info.cern.ch and was first put online on August 6, 1991. Tim Burners-Lee created the World Wide Web Consortium in 1994. Tim also created the Virtual Web library which is the oldest catalogue of the web. The history of the search engine is a fascinating story.
Related Articles
- Google Patent Application - SEO HighlightsThe recent patent application filed by Google details numerous items the search engine uses to rank web pages. The patent application sheds significant light for those pursuing search engine optimization with Google...
- History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google?Although we credit Google, Yahoo, and other major search engines for giving us the system we use to find the information we seek, the concept of hypertext came to life in 1945 when Vannaver Bush urged scientist to work together to help build a body of knowledge for all man kind.
- Preparing Your Pages for Search EngineBefore submitting your site to search engines you should make sure that your meta-tags have all the information you want for your users to search, see and click. Doing your meta-tags right ...
- A Brief History of RSSWhere did RSS come from? How long has it been around? RSS has had quite a history, some of which is shrouded in folklore, so I cant guarantee that my understanding of RSS history is 100 percent flawless. In fact, even what RSS stands for has changed over the years! There are three meanings for RSS....
- Is Google having a tough time with their website limit?If you are one to pay attention to what happens within the Google realm, you might find yourself thrown for a loop these days. As Google updates their results, it seems like they are having some issues dealing with so many new websites popping up...
- The Origin of SEOWe have been hearing a lot about SEO or the so called Search Engine Optimization. Have you ever thought were Search Engine Optimization started?
- Easy Search Engine OptimizationThis article recounts the history of effective Search Engine Optimization. The author explains that what used to work a few years or months ago will not work now, and he explains what the Search Engines expect now.
- Common Sections for Your WebsiteIve focused in the past on some individual sections of your website that you should consider implementing. What Im going to do now is give a brief overview of a number of pages and sections that are common in websites.
- What Is FAVICONWhat is favicon (or the Icon in general)? It is the little thing you see on your Location bar (History/Address bar) when you visit a web site, on the left of http://. For example, if you view a site through Internet Explorer, you see an e superimposed over a blank white paper sheet. The icon also...
- Google's AdWords Select(tm) Groundbreaking ProgramOne of the absolute best online marketing processes available to any business today is Googles AdWords Select advertising program. It produces immediate results within minutes after being setup, drives highly qualified traffic via selected keywords and can be monitored and modified on a 24/7 basis....