Archie (FTP Browser)

Archie is a system for locating information about files and directories, closely linked to the FTP service. It is like a large database where a large number of file names and FTP servers are registered. Like gopher, it has been superseded by the WWW.

Archie was the first search engine ever invented, designed to index FTP files, allowing people to find specific files. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and Peter J. Deutsch, then students at McGill University in Montreal.

Early versions of archie simply contacted a list of FTP files on a regular basis (contacting each one just once a month, so as not to spend too many resources on remote servers) and requiring a listing. These listings were stored in local files to be searched using the UNIX grep command. Later, more efficient front- and back-ends were developed, and this system went from being a local tool to a resource for the entire network, to a popular service accessible from multiple Internet sites. Such servers could be accessed in many ways: using a local client (such as archie or xarchie); telnetting to the server directly, sending queries via email, and later with World Wide Web interfaces. The name archie comes from the English word "archive", but is also associated with the American comic book series "Archie". This was not the original intent, but it was what acted as the inspiration for the names Jughead (officially an acronym for Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) and Veronica (an acronym for "Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net -wide Index to Computer Archives"), both search systems for the Gopher protocol. With the advent of the World Wide Web, searching for files has become much easier, and currently there are very few active servers. A gateway can be found in Poland and Japan.