Defunct software project
For the act of asking, see
Enquiry
. For the web based software made by Tactiv Pty Ltd, see
enQuire
.
ENQUIRE
was a
software
project written in 1980 by
Tim Berners-Lee
at
CERN
,
[2]
which was the predecessor to the
World Wide Web
.
[2]
[3]
[4]
It was a simple
hypertext
program
[4]
that had some of the same ideas as the Web and the
Semantic Web
but was different in several important ways.
According to Berners-Lee, the name was inspired by the title of an old how-to book,
Enquire Within upon Everything
.
[2]
[3]
[5]
The conditions
[
edit
]
Around 1980, approximately 10,000 people were working at CERN with different
hardware
,
software
and individual requirements. Much work was done by
email
and file exchange.
[4]
The scientists needed to keep track of different things
[3]
and different projects became involved with each other.
[2]
Berners-Lee started to work for 6 months on 23 June 1980 at CERN while he developed ENQUIRE.
[6]
The requirements for setting up a new system were compatibility with different networks, disk formats, data formats, and character encoding schemes, which made any attempt to transfer information between dissimilar systems a daunting and generally impractical task.
[7]
The different hypertext-systems before ENQUIRE were not passing these requirements i.e.
Memex
and
NLS
.
[7]
Differences to the World Wide Web
[
edit
]
Documentation of the RPC project (concept)
Most of the documentation is available on VMS, with the two
principle manuals being stored in the CERNDOC system.
1) includes: The VAX/NOTES conference VXCERN::RPC
2) includes: Test and Example suite
3) includes: RPC BUG LISTS
4) includes: RPC System: Implementation Guide
Information for maintenance, porting, etc.
5) includes: Suggested Development Strategy for RPC Applications
6) includes: "Notes on RPC", Draft 1, 20 feb 86
7) includes: "Notes on Proposed RPC Development" 18 Feb 86
8) includes: RPC User Manual
How to build and run a distributed system.
9) includes: Draft Specifications and Implementation Notes
10) includes: The RPC HELP facility
11) describes: THE REMOTE PROCEDURE CALL PROJECT in DD/OC
Help Display Select Back Quit Mark Goto_mark Link Add Edit
A screen in an ENQUIRE scheme.
[1]
ENQUIRE had pages called
cards
and hyperlinks within the cards. The links had different meanings and about a dozen relationships which were displayed to the creator, things, documents and groups described by the card. The relationship between the links could be seen by everybody explaining what the need of the link was or what happen if a
card
was removed.
[4]
Everybody was allowed to add new cards but they always needed an existing card.
[6]
Relationship
|
Inverse Relationship
|
made
|
was made by
|
includes
|
is part of
|
uses
|
is used by
|
describes
|
is described by
|
ENQUIRE was closer to a modern
wiki
than to a
web site
:
- database
, though a closed system (all of the data could be taken as a workable whole)
[2]
- bidirectional hyperlinks (in
Wikipedia
and
MediaWiki
, this is approximated by the
What links here
feature). This bidirectionality allows ideas, notes, etc. to link to each other without the author being aware of this. In a way, they (or, at least, their relationships) get a life of their own.
[4]
[8]
- direct editing of the server (like wikis and
CMS
/
blogs
)
[2]
- ease of compositing, particularly when it comes to
hyperlinking
.
[2]
The World Wide Web was created to unify the different existing systems at CERN like ENQUIRE, the
CERNDOC
, VMS Notes and the
USENET
.
[1]
Why ENQUIRE failed
[
edit
]
Berners-Lee came back to CERN in 1984 and intensively used his own system.
[1]
[4]
He realized that most of the time coordinating the
project
was to keep information up to date.
[4]
He recognized that a system similar to ENQUIRE was needed, "but accessible to everybody."
[4]
There was a need that people be able to create cards independently of others and to link to other cards without updating the linked card. This idea is the big difference and the cornerstone to the
World Wide Web
.
[4]
Berners-Lee didn't make ENQUIRE suitable for other persons to use the system successfully, and in other CERN divisions there were similar situations to the division he was in.
[1]
Another problem was that external links, for example to existing databases, weren't allowed, and that the system wasn't powerful enough to handle enough connections to the database.
[1]
[2]
Further development stopped because Berners-Lee gave the ENQUIRE disc to
Robert Cailliau
, who had been working under
Brian Carpenter
before he left CERN. Carpenter suspects that the disc was reused for other purposes since nobody was later available to do further work on ENQUIRE.
[9]
Technical
[
edit
]
The application ran on
terminal
with
plaintext
24x80.
[4]
The first version was able to hyperlink between files.
[2]
ENQUIRE was written in the
Pascal
programming language
and implemented on a
Norsk Data
NORD-10
under
SINTRAN III
,
[2]
[4]
[6]
[8]
[9]
and version 2 was later
ported
to
MS-DOS
and to
VAX/VMS
.
[2]
[4]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Berners-Lee, Tim
(May 1990).
"Information Management: A Proposal"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
25 August
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
Berners-Lee, Tim
.
"Frequently asked questions ? Start of the web: Influences"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
22 July
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
Jeffery, Simon; Fenn, Chris; Smith, Bobbie; Coumbe, John (23 October 2009).
"A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today"
(
Flash
)
.
The Guardian
. London. pp. See 1980
. Retrieved
7 January
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
Berners-Lee, Tim
(c. 1993).
"A Brief History of the Web"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
24 August
2010
.
- ^
Finkelstein, Prof. Anthony (15 August 2003).
"ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING"
.
ICT Portal
.
BBC
. Archived from
the original
on 21 June 2003
. Retrieved
7 January
2010
.
- ^
a
b
c
"History of the Web"
. Oxford Brookes University. 2002. Archived from
the original
on 25 September 2010
. Retrieved
20 November
2010
.
- ^
a
b
Berners-Lee, Tim
(August 1996).
"The World Wide Web: Past, Present and Future"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
25 August
2010
.
- ^
a
b
Cailliau, Robert
(1995).
"A Little History of the World Wide Web"
.
World Wide Web Consortium
. Retrieved
25 July
2010
.
- ^
a
b
Palmer, Sean B.;
Berners-Lee, Tim
(February?March 2001).
"Enquire Manual ? In HyperText"
. Retrieved
30 August
2010
.
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Berners-Lee, Tim
(2000).
Weaving the web. The original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web
. New York: Harper Business.
External links
[
edit
]