Re: How the Whitehouse website came to be

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "charles.brownstein" <charles.brownstein () verizon net>
Date: January 21, 2009 10:46:33 AM EST
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] How the Whitehouse website came to be

Web presence for federal agencies was a cornerstone of "reinventing  
government with information technology" - an effort I co-chaired for  
Al Gore's National Performance Review in the first year of the Clinton  
administration. The case was also made for ubiquitous agency email,  
Internet service delivery and a host of other IT applications.

So easy to forget there were many naysayers who expected little from  
the upstart technology, the market for home computers was tiny, and  
the bukl of the net  belonged to the research cmmunity and it's  
subsidized user community.

Sent from my iPhone
571 217 5432

On Jan 21, 2009, at 10:15 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Jock Gill <jg45 () me com>
> Date: January 21, 2009 9:45:36 AM EST
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Jock Gill <jg45 () me com>, Peter Swire <peter () peterswire net>, jmurrell () bayareanewsgroup com 
> , Wayne Rash <wrash () mindspring com>, Graeme Browning <graeme.browning () us ibm com 
> >, Schwartz John <jswatz () nytimes com>, Jeff Eller <jeller () pstrategies com 
> >, Henry Kelly <hkelly () fas org>
> Subject: Fwd: How the Whitehouse website came to be
>
> Dave,
>
> Perhaps of interest.
>
> Tony supplies some very little known history of the internet in the  
> early days of the first Clinton Administration.  His role was  
> pivotal and essential.  As was my boss Jeff Eller's and Henry  
> Kelly's support in OSTP.   Not to mention the low flying cover John  
> Podesta provided.  Heady days just 15 years or so ago.
>
> Wayne Rash and Graeme Browning wrote books about this period of the  
> Internet and politics. John Schwartz, then with the WaPo, covered it  
> as well.
>
> Jock
>
> Jock Gill
> Localize, Connect & Ignite
> Peacham, VT
> O: +1 (781) 396-0492
> C: +1 (617) 449-8111
>
> <http://www.flickr.com/photos/jockgill/>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> > From: Tony Rutkowski <trutkowski () netmagic com>
> > Date: January 20, 2009 9:56:17 PM EST
> > To: <jgill () penfield-gill com>
> > Subject: How the Whitehouse website came to be
> >
> >
> > > "Tony, Thanks.  Your memory for these things is better than mine.   
> > > Very porous.  I do remember that you showed me a sketch fro a  
> > > possible WWW site for the White House on a hand held portable you  
> > > loved.  This would have been in the late Fall of 1993. It really  
> > > fired me up.  Or is my memory fooling me.  And do remind me: what  
> > > was that hand held?  Jock"
> >
> > Hi Jock,
> >
> > It's a great story of your initiative, our collective
> > whimsy, and serendipity.
> >
> > I still have most of the emails and notes.  In the 93
> > timeframe, you were driving most of the Internet
> > changes in the WH.  I was driving Internet business
> > development at Sprint- which had the WH house under the
> > FTS2000 contract.  You were seeking an Internet
> > messaging capability from your internal network that
> > was generating X.400 messages.  Sprint arranged to haul
> > those messages on a slow packet network link up to Ann
> > Arbor MI for Merit under contract to convert the
> > messages and provide an Internet interface.  It was
> > very slow; and at one point you complained that "a
> > snake could cross Pennsylvania Ave carrying the messages
> > faster than Sprint's service."
> >
> > A series of events occurred.
> >
> > Jack Fox scheduled a meeting at his office around
> > Thanksgiving 1993 to deal with the problem.
> >
> > A few days before, the Urbana IL Supercomputer Center
> > hosting the Mosaic browser development had just
> > released for the first time a Windows version of the
> > browser and I had begun playing with it.
> >
> > My dad also came to town to visit and had gotten passes
> > from his Congressman to visit the WH.  We also
> > purchased several guidebooks (which I still have).
> >
> > On the way into town on the Metro, I got the idea of
> > creating a website and started to sketch it out.  It
> > was based on the idea of allowing someone like my
> > father to visit and engage with the Whitehouse.
> > There were three dimensions to the site:
> >
> > 1) a national monument,
> > 2) the seat of the executive branch, and
> > 3) the home of the President.
> >
> > After the meeting started in Jack's office where a lot
> > of people had assembled, Jack announced that the EOP
> > had just bought a T1 circuit to the Internet from Spint
> > and he asked everyone what the WH was going to do with
> > it.  There was a very long pause!  I then went up to
> > the whiteboard and sketched out my idea.
> >
> > Everyone loved it.  Jack said "why doesn't Sprint build
> > it."  So I went back elated to my office, and ecstatically
> > emailed everyone up to the CEO of Sprint.  The message
> > I received back was "why would Sprint want to build/host
> > websites."  I was told I was on my own.
> >
> > So I scanned images from the guidebooks my father had
> > purchased and constructed the first website on my home
> > desktop.  I transferred a copy to my little Gateway
> > Notebook and we got together.  You checked with some
> > folks there and everyone seemed to like it.
> >
> > I arranged via Eric Schmidt who was the CTO at Sun and
> > a friend, to get a couple of their quad processor
> > servers to be donated for a room that was empty in the
> > Old EOB.  However, we needed some programming/operations
> > talent.  I think you contacted Ton Villasenor at NASA.
> > A related email is below.
> >
> > We ultimately had two delays in the rollout.  One was
> > because my kids wanted Socks the cat on part 3 of the
> > website and you had to find someone to get the picture.
> > The other was the linking to other agencies for part 2
> > of the website.  For that, I ended up capturing the
> > Federal Handbook index of agencies and manually
> > checking which had sites up or not.  Then I added them
> > to the index page and printed out color images for someone
> > to hand out allegedly by POTUS to embarrass the many
> > agencies without websites into getting something up.
> > Those who didn't have sites appeared a dull gray on
> > the index.
> >
> > Later David Lytel and others in OSTP came on the
> > scene and enhanced the site.  It became so popular,
> > it got shifted to a more robust arrangement.
> >
> > --tony
> >
> >
> > > Date: Fri, 11 Feb 94 20:44:18 -0500
> > > From: Chris Shenton <cshenton () wasabi nsi nasa gov>
> > > To: amr () isoc org, dlytel () ostp eop gov
> > > Cc: jgill () eop gov, jhandal () nsf gov, villasen () nsipo arc nasa gov,
> > >    yin () atlas arc nasa gov, jmount () lupine nsi nasa gov,
> > >    maria.gallagher () arc nasa gov, laura.stark () arc nasa gov,
> > >    cshenton () wasabi nsi nasa gov
> > > Subject: OSTP Web server is online -- with a little data
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, 11 Feb 1994 10:49:57 +0500, Tony Rutkowski <amr () isoc org>  
> > > said:
> > >
> > > Tony> The concept was to have a small giff version of each of these
> > > Tony> images to represent the white house as: 1) a national  
> > > monument,
> > > Tony> 2) the seat of the executive brance, and 3) the home of the
> > > Tony> President.
> > >
> > > I've gotten the first two and made reduced images at about 100x100
> > > pixels. This gives a reasonable size for Mosaic, and isn't too  
> > > tedious
> > > for folks with slow links, eg: SLIP/PPP. I can create other sizes  
> > > with
> > > minimal effort.
> > >
> > > I can do the same with the people-shot when that' available.
> > >
> > > Tony> Clicking on the small images would lead to an http version of
> > > Tony> the larger.  clicking on adjacent text would lead to threads
> > > Tony> providing additional information and pages along the three  
> > > lines
> > > Tony> outlined above.
> > >
> > > I have the image part working: clicking on the seal or whitehouse
> > > inline image gets the full sized one from your scan.
> > >
> > > I've also included the information/links from the sunsite.unc.edu
> > > version of the Whitehouse homepage, just to provide some action.  
> > > This
> > > includes press releases, the 1995 budget, and 1994 State of the  
> > > Union
> > > Address.
> > >
> > > Although it isn't even at the prototype stage -- information-wise --
> > > it will give us something to work with.
> > >
> > >
> > > --Chris
>
>
> Archives        




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