Gopher

Pocket gopher

Attwater’s Pockrt Gopher (5A) Weishuhn Rd. Colorado Co. TX; 12 May 2014

Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval network protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the Internet. The Gopher protocol offers some similarities to the World Wide Web, with its most notable difference being the presentation of information. Gopher presents its content as a hierarchically structured text interface, whereas the Web offers a more integrated multimedia approach. Gopher was created in 1991 by a team led by Mark P. McCahill at the University of Minnesota. Its name was inspired by the school's mascot, the Golden Gophers.

Overview

Gopher's design structure is menu-driven, allowing users to browse directory listings and select which files to view, download, or which new Gopher servers to connect. This simplicity and ease of use contributed to its initial rapid growth. However, with the advent of the World Wide Web and graphical browsers such as Mosaic, Gopher's popularity waned. The Web's ability to integrate text with multimedia elements (images, sound, video) and its lack of a need for a centralized directory server (as Gopher required) led to the Web becoming the dominant means of accessing information over the Internet.

Technical Details

The Gopher protocol is specified in RFC 1436, "The Internet Gopher Protocol (a distributed document search and retrieval protocol)" which was published in March 1993. Gopher servers present their contents as a hierarchically structured list of files. When a user selects a file, the server sends the file to the user's client. The files can be documents, articles, programs, or query interfaces to more dynamic data sources.

Gopher's ability to index and search documents was one of its key features. This was typically facilitated by a tool called Veronica, which allowed users to search for keywords in Gopher menu titles across multiple servers.

Decline

The introduction of the World Wide Web and browsers capable of displaying graphics and multimedia content shifted user and developer interest away from Gopher. Additionally, the University of Minnesota announced in 1993 that it would start charging licensing fees for the use of its Gopher server software, which further discouraged its use. Despite its decline, Gopher maintains a niche user base and has experienced a minor resurgence in interest as part of the retro computing and information freedom movements.

Legacy

Gopher's influence is seen in the way early Internet services were structured and in the development of subsequent Internet protocols. Its emphasis on a hierarchical structure of information influenced the design of later web directories and the development of web standards. While Gopher itself has largely been supplanted by the Web, it remains an important part of Internet history and a reminder of the Internet's early days of exploration and innovation.