Mark P. McCahill
Mark P. McCahill (Mark Perry McCahill) | |
---|---|
Born | February 7, 1956 |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | Programmer/systems architect |
Employers | |
Known for | Inventing the Gopher protocol, the predecessor of the World Wide Web; developing and popularizing a number of other Internet technologies |
Mark Perry McCahill (born February 7, 1956) is an American
Career
Mark McCahill received a BA in chemistry at the University of Minnesota in 1979, spent one year doing analytical environmental chemistry, and then joined the University of Minnesota Computer Center as a programmer.[1]
Internet pioneer
In the late 1980s, McCahill led the team at the University of Minnesota that developed POPmail, one of the first popular Internet e-mail clients.
In 1991, McCahill led the original Gopher development team, which invented a simple way to navigate distributed information resources on the Internet.[4][5][6][7] Gopher's menu-based hypermedia combined with full-text search engines paved the way for the popularization of the World Wide Web and was the de facto standard for Internet information systems in the early to mid 1990s.[2]
Working with other pioneers such as
In the mid 90s, McCahill's team developed GopherVR, a 3D user interface for the Gopher protocol to explore how spatial metaphors could be used to organize information and create social spaces.[9]
He is said to have coined or popularized the phrase "surfing the Internet".[1] However, prior to McCahill's first use of the phrase in February, 1992, the analogy was used in a comic Book, The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy, published in October, 1991 by one of the early Internet Service Providers, CERFnet.[10]
Later work
In April 2007, McCahill left the
Virtual worlds
In February 2010, Mark McCahill was revealed by the philosopher
References
- ^ a b c "University Of Minnesota / Internet pioneer making move to Duke faculty". Twin Cities. 2007-04-01. Retrieved 2019-03-15.
- ^ a b Gihring, Tim. "The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol". minnpost.com. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
- ^ "For Inventor of Eudora, Great Fame, No Fortune". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
- ^ "Internet Pioneers – Lost in Cyberspace". The Economist. 1999-12-16.
- ^ "How Gopher Nearly Won the Internet". The Chronicle of Higher Education. 2016-09-05.
- ^ "The rise and fall of the Gopher protocol". 2016-08-11.
- ^ "The Gopher Project: Early Internet and U of M Libraries | Minitex News". news.minitex.umn.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-14.
- Charles Babbage Institute. 2001-09-13.
- ISBN 978-1-4471-3622-4.
- ^ The Adventures of Captain Internet And CERF Boy. 1991.
- ^ "Mark McCahill, Collaborative Systems Architect". Retrieved 14 September 2021.
- ^ "Pixeleen Mistral Files Legal Response to Venkman's DMCA Abuses". The Alphaville Herald. February 6, 2010.
- ^ "Mark McCahill". Triangulation. Episode 264. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21.
External links
- "Oral History Interview with Mark P. McCahill". Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. September 13, 2001.