Archie, the world’s first search engine, has been rescued and returned to the internet

Archie, one of the internet’s first search engines, has been rescued and revived by a YouTube channel. The site, which is nothing more than an FTP file indexer, was one of the pioneers of today’s top search engines.

Opened in 1990 but first recorded in 1986 Archie was created by Alan Emtage.Graduate student at McGill University’s School of Computer Science.

Essentially, Archie was an indexer of anonymous public files on FTP (File Transfer Protocol). a communications protocol not currently in use. Users could find a wide variety of files from here, but they had to be downloaded to the computer to view them.

Unlike modern search engines, Archie did not interpret natural language and could not understand the content contained in files. For this reason The user needed to know the title of the requested file to find it in the search engine.

historic preservation

The entire Archie reboot process was handled by the creators of YouTube channel The Serial Port. The process was documented entirely on video; This video also tells the story behind the search engine and the results of its implementation.

During the documentary, Serial Port mentions that the FTP protocol has become obsolete, being replaced by more refined and secure protocols. The video also includes an interview with Alan Emtage, who claims to have sent one of the last copies of the indexer to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, United States, but this is no longer useful.

Fortunately, the channel tracked down other copies distributed there and managed to find a working unit. According to the video, the unit found was in Beta 3.5

Archie is alive again

With this historical copy Serial Port has rebuilt its website and hosted its own version of Archie online. Today you can access it normally from the official website and search similarly to how it was done in the past.

But currently indexing aggregates its own collection of files along with files using the FTP protocol. You can find a lot of useful and old items here, including the classic “Antiword” program – a classic password manager.

Fortunately, now Archie is on the internet once againand its legacy will be preserved in an active website that will likely outlast its initial implementation.