\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}
