The news spread pretty quickly at my university in Chicago, where I was working in 91. Having used archie and gopher we immediately recognized the potential. Yeah, Cern's www line mode browser with its numbered link interface wasn't much. We knew that would change. What mattered was the protocol. For me UK's lynx provided the first fast curses interface. We started gathering and providing lots of academic info really quickly. Watching think tank and academic info growth explode exponentially was a great experience. Some early bookmarks: lanl, ncsa, ukansas, uminn, simtel, ibiblio. What struck me as goofy after 91 -- and this persisted for a few years even after Mosaic was released -- were the web sites that tried to replicate the feel of a gopher interface.
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The news spread pretty quickly at my university in Chicago, where I was working in 91. Having used archie and gopher we immediately recognized the potential. Yeah, Cern's www line mode browser with its numbered link interface wasn't much. We knew that would change. What mattered was the protocol. For me UK's lynx provided the first fast curses interface. We started gathering and providing lots of academic info really quickly. Watching think tank and academic info growth explode exponentially was a great experience. Some early bookmarks: lanl, ncsa, ukansas, uminn, simtel, ibiblio. What struck me as goofy after 91 -- and this persisted for a few years even after Mosaic was released -- were the web sites that tried to replicate the feel of a gopher interface.