The Internet’s history can be traced way back to the 1960s. However, most of us weren’t aware of it until the ’90s or later. One of the protocols that used to be a large player in Internet traffic was Gopher.

The Gopher protocol was developed at the University of Minnesota, who then named the text file sharing system after the school mascot.

Believe it or not, Gopher used to be more popular than the familiar http protocol that is used to produce the hundreds of millions of Web sites that are out there now.

Today’s Family First site is a brief history of Gopher. The fact is that it was a very productive, efficient way to share information in an age when connections to the Internet were frequently via 2400 baud or slower modems.

As interest in http exploded, Gopher began fading away. One of the biggest issues going against its further development was the fact that it was a privately-owned technology. The BlackBerry mess shows why development of such protocols is risky. The owner may someday present you with a bill.

While that never happened with Gopher, http’s slick look also put nails in its coffin.

Anyhow, it’s fascinating to learn about this once-popular system. You can also learn about the Veronica and Jughead file searching systems.

So soak up a bit of early Internet surfing at today’s Family First site. And check out the links at the end of the article for more fascinating Gopher facts.

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[tags]family first,http,the internet gopher,internet history,university of minnesota[/tags]