Alan Emtage (born November 27, 1964) is a

Bajan Bajan may refer to: Geography and culture Barbados * Barbadians, known by the colloquialism Bajan(s) (pronounced 'bay-jun') * Barbadian English language * Bajan Creole, a Creole language Other location * Something or someone from Baja ...

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

who conceived and implemented the first version of

Archie Archie is a masculine given name, a diminutive of Archibald. It may refer to: People Given name or nickname *Archie Alexander (1888–1958), African-American mathematician, engineer and governor of the US Virgin Islands * Archie Blake (mathemati ...

, a pre-

Web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

for locating material in public FTP archives. It is widely considered the world's first Internet search engine.

Life

Emtage was born in

Barbados Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estima ...

, the son of Sir Stephen and Lady Emtage. He attended high school at Harrison College from 1975 to 1983 (and in 1981 became the owner of a

Sinclair ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-co ...

with 1K of memory), where he graduated at the top of his class, winning the Barbados Scholarship. In 1983 Emtage entered

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univer ...

Montreal, Quebec Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple-pe ...

, Canada, studying for an honors

Bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to si ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

which was followed by a

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in 1987 from which he graduated in 1991. Emtage was part of the team that brought the first Internet link to eastern Canada (and only the second link in the country) in 1986. In 1989 while a student and working as a systems administrator for the School of Computer Science, Emtage conceived and implemented the original version of the

Archie search engine Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing users to more easily identify specific files. It is considered the first Internet search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, then a postgraduate student a ...

, the world's first Internet search engine. In 1992, Emtage along with Peter Deutsch, also a McGill graduate, formed Bunyip Information Systems in Montreal—the world's first company expressly founded for and dedicated to providing Internet information services with a licensed commercial version of the Archie search engine. Emtage was a founding member of the

Internet Society The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people ...

and went on to create and chair several working groups at the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements an ...

(IETF), the standard-setting body for the Internet. Working with other pioneers such as

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profes ...

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silico ...

, Mark McCahill (creator of Gopher) and

Jon Postel Jonathan Bruce Postel (; August 6, 1943 – October 16, 1998) was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards. He is known principally for bein ...

, Emtage co-chaired the

Uniform Resource Identifier A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is a unique sequence of characters that identifies a logical or physical resource used by web technologies. URIs may be used to identify anything, including real-world objects, such as people and places, conc ...

working group which created the standard for

Uniform Resource Locator A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identif ...

s (URLs). On September 18, 2017 Emtage was inducted as an Innovator by the

into the

Internet Hall of Fame The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.

in a ceremony in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

. On October 20, 2019 Emtage was conferred the

Honorary Degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad h ...

Doctor of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

from the

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 17 English-speaking countries and territories in the ...

. On October 26, 2022 Emtage was conferred the

from

. Emtage has spoken and lectured on Internet Information Systems and is chief technical officer at Mediapolis, a Web engineering company in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Works

* A. Emtage, P. Deutsch
''archie - An Electronic Directory Service for the Internet''
Winter Usenix Conference Proceedings 1992. Pages 93–110. * Michael F. Schwartz, Alan Emtage, Brewster Kahle, B. Clifford Neuman
''A Comparison of Internet Resource Discovery Approaches''
Computing Systems, Fall 1992, pp. 461–493, 5(4), * P. Deutsch, A. Emtage, A. Marine
''How to Use Anonymous FTP''
(RFC1635, May 1994) * Alan Emtage, "Publishing in the Internet environment", Proceedings of the Sixth Joint European Networking Conference, 1995 * Alan Emtage
"Can You Imagine A World Without Search?"
Medium, September 2015

References

;Additional sources * ''The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture'' John Battelle (Portfolio Hardcover, 2005) * ''How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web'' Robert Cailliau, James Gillies, R. Cailliau (Oxford University Press, 2000) *''The Information Revolution: The Not-for-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology, And Use of the World Wide Web'' J. R. Okin (Ironbound Press, 2005) *''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science'' Marcel Dekker (CRC Press, 2002) *''Encyclopedia of Microcomputers''

Allen Kent Allen Kent (October 24, 1921 – May 1, 2014) was an information scientist. Early life He was born in New York City.
ASIS&T obitu ...

, James G Williams, Kent Kent (Marcel Dekke, 2002)
Hobbes' Internet Timeline

A Brief History of Search Engines

PC Magazine, April 24, 2007
* * * *

External links

Home page for Alan Emtage

Radio Interview - starts at 36:08
(November 7, 2009) - ''Saturday Live, BBC Radio 4'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Emtage, Alan McGill University Faculty of Science alumni 1964 births Living people Barbadian emigrants to Canada Barbadian emigrants to the United States Canadian computer scientists Internet pioneers