On Archie’s 30th anniversary,?? ?? ?? we salute the world’s first search engine, a pioneer that paved the way for giants to come.
Archie was first released to the general public on Sept. 10, 1990. It was developed as a school project by Alan Emtage at McGill University in Montreal.
According to an interview with Digital Archaeology, Emtage had been working as a grad student in 1989 in the university's information technology department. His job required him to find software for other students and faculty. He wrote some code to do this, which later came to be known as Archie. Bill Heelan and Peter Deutsch also were key in Archie's development, as they wrote the script that allowed others to log on and use the search engine.
Archie didn’t exactly look like the search engines we know now. When users logged on, they found a text-based landing page with a couple of search parameter options — no ads or interactive graphics like what we're used to these days.
In the early days of the internet, Archie (archive without the "v") was actually just an index of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites. FTP is essentially a way to transfer files between computers. Once you found what you thought you were looking for with Archie, you’d have to download the file before you could see what was inside.
SEE ALSO: What is an algorithm, anyway?Archie couldn’t use natural language keywords, so you had to make sure to limit your search to one word that reallygot at what you wanted. Searching for a photo of Bill Clinton? Better refine that to just “Clinton,” otherwise you might get hundreds of files about financial bills, the Bill of Rights, duck bills… all of which you had to comb through yourself.
Search engines that came after Archie? Jughead and Veronica, of course. (Fun fact: Emtage said he loathed the Archie comic book character.) They gave way to the search engines you're probably familiar with today, like Yahoo in 1995 and Google in 1997.
While searching for what you want on the internet has become considerably faster and easier since 1990, we wouldn’t be where we are today without Archie.
Screening of ‘The Crimson Kimono’ at OccidentalTOKEN2049 Singapore Set to Be World’s Largest Web3 EventNorio Uyematsu Preserves JA Korean War Vets’ LegacyJAs Organize for HarrisRAMBLINGS FROM THE SON OF A PAPER SON: TreasuresSuehiro Cafe and UPRISERS: A Collaboration of Memories and SustainabilityNisei Week Pauses to Salute Key Community FiguresScreening of Anime Movie ‘Pop in Q’ in Costa MesaIEM6 WC semi finals previewRAMBLINGS FROM THE SON OF A PAPER SON: Treasures Kamala Harris deepfakes are going viral on TikTok and Elon Musk's X Slack introduced new widgets for your iPhone AI child sex abuse material is proliferating on the dark web. Big Tech Best Kindle Scribe deal: Save on the refurbished Kindle Scribe There and back: Elon Musk's SpaceX makes history with epic rocket launch and landing This treaty has a massive, $19 trillion upside, but Trump may walk away anyway Amazon deals of the day: AirPods Max, Dash Tasti Best Buy Great Summer Sale: Get 50% off video games Best tablet deal: Get a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite for $120 off CrowdStrike on outage: 'Bad actors will try to exploit events like this'
0.2214s , 9928.578125 kb
Copyright © 2025 Powered by 【?? ?? ??】Enter to watch online.Archie, the very first search engine, was released 30 years ago today,