From e0c6872cf40896c7be36b11dcc744620f10adf1d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2019 13:46:59 +0900
Subject: Initial commit

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+\title{An aged archivist remembers\ldots}
+\author{Sebastian Rahtz}
+\begin{Article}
+\noindent
+In his recent article on \emph{CTAN past and present}, Robin Fairbairns'
+description of the events leading up to \acro{CTAN} do not quite correspond
+to what I (as, I think, the longest-standing active \TeX{} archivist)
+recall.  Firstly, the history of the Aston Archive should distinguish
+between three phases: Peter Abbott's sole and herculean efforts in
+1987 and 1988; the establishment of an archive group by Peter after
+the 1988 \TeX eter conference; and the translation of the original
+\acro{VAX}-based archive to a Unix box in 1992. That second stage was
+important, because the archive was the first in 1989 to have a clear
+\emph{structure}, decided on at the second archivists meeting.
+
+Secondly, what happened between about 1990 and 1992 at Sam Houston was
+not \acro{CTAN}; it was an inchoate treasure trove looked after by George
+Greenwade, which was but one of a group of big archives which included
+\texttt{labrea} at Stanford itself, Don Hosek's \texttt{ymir} and
+Stuttgart (Stuttgart was around a long time before \acro{CTAN}, with a good
+service).
+
+Thirdly, the \acro{TUG} working group which defined the \acro{CTAN}
+concept started
+in mid 1992, but did no more than talk until Aston took the lead
+in the summer of 1992 and established the first working incarnation of
+the ideas thrashed out in email. I say this confidently, because I
+vividly remember the two days I spent in Peter Abbott's office setting
+up his new Sparc, and creating the first \acro{CTAN}. At that time I also
+defined the gopher interface, nightly indexing, extensive mirrors and
+dynamic zipping and tarring. Subsequently, this `Daughter' archive ran
+in parallel with the \acro{VAX} (which was still physically visible to
+delegates to \acro{TUG}'93 at Aston) for a long time. George Greenwade was
+delighted with what was created, and started to set up \acro{SHSU} in the
+same way, and Rainer Sch\"opf also rapidly converted the Stuttgart
+system; by the time the three of us met physically at the \acro{TUG}'93
+conference, we were confidently claiming mirror status of each other
+(not entirely truthfully!), and George gave a successful live
+demonstration at the conference of the Aston service. The complicated
+email-based maintenance scheme was developed by Rainer \emph{after}
+TUG '93, after we had experimented with \acro{NFS} and other games.
+
+I do not apologize for perhaps boring \BV{} readers with this slice of
+history. It is a sad fact (and I suppose a compliment) that the \TeX{}
+archives have been used as pawns in the \TeX-world politics that so
+deplorably weaken our joint endeavours; so it is only right that we
+should not lose sight of how things developed.
+
+\end{Article}
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