Gopher

The Gopher system was released by Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota. Its goals were creating:

• A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users.
• A simple syntax.
• A system that can be created quickly without much cost.
• Extending the file system with searches.

Gopher combines document hierarchies with collections of services, including WAIS, Archie and Veronica search engines, and gateways to other information systems such as FTP and Usenet.