The Origins of Internet Search: Archie and WAIS

Archie, invented in 1989 by Peter Deutsch and his team at McGill University in Montreal, created an archive for FTP sites that periodically visited all open file‑download sites, listed their files, and built a searchable software index. The Archie command was a UNIX command, requiring UNIX knowledge to use effectively.

McGill University, home of the first Archie installation, observed that about half of the traffic between the United States and Canada accessed Archie each day. Concerned about whether their management program could handle such volume, the university temporarily blocked external access, though many other Archie servers remained available.

Brewster Kahle, while at Thinking Machines, invented WAIS (Wide Area Information Service), which could retrieve all files within a database and allow file searching. Various versions existed, and the simplest allowed anyone on the Internet to use it. At its peak, the company maintained references to over 600 databases worldwide, including common newsgroup FAQs and research papers on network standards. Like Archie, WAIS’s interface was not very intuitive, requiring considerable effort to use effectively.