Introduction
Between 2008 and 2023, I worked as a content developer for the Scott College of Business, Indiana State University, creating designs and content for their web pages and electronic devices.
During my time there I got interested in the university's early web presence. Most, if not all of the early servers have been shut down, but luckily the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has saved many of the older pages.
Gopher
The earliest web presence of Indiana State I can find was a Gopher server that was created in January, 1993. All I know about it was that it was at gopher://newgopher.indstate.edu/ and that it contained "a variety of information, mostly of interest to the ISU community."
The Life Sciences gopher server was created in June 1994 and delivered a variety of information including the Computer Applications Proficiency Examination materials.
Early HTTP Presence
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine did not start collecting websites until May 1996, but as the earliest Indiana State University HTTP servers were created in the Spring of 1994, unless someone, somewhere has these very early pages archived somewhere, those are probably gone forever.
It appears that the department most responsible for providing the web sites, subdomains, and computational teaching technology from the mid-1990s was the Department of Life Science (DLS), Center for Biological Computing usually in association with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Faculty Computing Resources Center. Although they had "limited resources and no permanent staff", their goal was to "provide access to the technologies and applications which can be incorporated into teaching." Services offered by the DLS included web space; HyperMail, a program that accepted E-Mail messages and generated a set of cross-referenced HTML documents; HyperNews, a package of software that supported conferencing on the internet; TeamWave, an application which provided a permanent, shared space for use by a class or other group; Web Course in a Box, which enabled instructors to set up web pages for a course; and WebCamToo, a webserver application which also served live video.
The page at Campus Information Servers (archived 1 April 1997), gives a list of some of the earliest servers and some of the information they contained.
The ISU Libraries web server (archived 8 May 1997) was developed in Spring, 1994 and was designed to take advantage of graphical navigation tools for access to electronic references throughout the Internet.
The ISU Career Center web server (archived 11 February 1997) began service in August 1996. Powered by a Power Macintosh 8550 Work Group Server. It ran the WebSTAR v1.2.4 web server software, and MapServe.acgi which was a CGI program to create server-side image maps. The server delivered news and information to students, alumni, faculty, and employers. They planned to update the server with listservs for discussion groups, searchable FileMaker Pro databases, and online student and employer registrations. The site was created using Adobe Photoshop 2.5, Aldus SuperPaint 3.5, GIF Converter 2.3.7, OmniPage text scanner, JOVE unix editor, and some JAVA scripts.
The Faculty Computing Resource Center (archived 4 November 1996) existed to aid faculty and staff to incorporate technology into the curriculum.
The Life Sciences web server (archived 10 December 1997, but by then the page had become Indiana State University's home page) began service in the Summer of 1994. It offered CUSeeMe video conferencing tools and archives, the archives of the Association of Midwest College Biology Teachers, and an ftp archive for DOS and Linux software. This server also houses a number of home pages of individuals associated with Indiana State University, students, faculty, staff, and otherwise affiliated. These were hosted on the subdomains Thunder (archived 8 December 1996) and Mama (archived 19 February 1999).
The Purchasing Department web server (archived 30 December 1996) began service in December, 1994. The site covers policies and procedures for the purchase of equipment by University departments. Dave Tutton's page on the server shows some of the softare used to make and maintain it.
Dr. Bialaszewski's WebServer (archived 22 December 1996) first came into existence late 1995 as an experimental server. It used Apache web server running on a Gateway 2000 computer with an Intel Pentium Processor running at 75Mhz. It was used as a teaching tool for Management Information Systems students in various classes on the usage of Unix as well as HTML editing and other Internet related topics. The server also served as a home for some of ISU's students, faculties, and organizations. It was last archived on 15 May 1998.
The Center for Teaching & Learning has had a set of pages from at least August 1997 (archived 16 January 1998).
Subdomains
Indiana State University has run several subdomains over the years. If you are interested enough to go to some of the Internet Archive links and go through te timeline you may notice that some pages redirect to a different subdomain. This is because as a site's design changed, it was usually devloped on a separate one and the old one redirected to that once it was complete. Here's some of the subdomains I know about:
ACUBE
ACUBE was a subdomain for the Association of College & University Biology Educators. The Association was formerly known as the Association of Midwestern College Biology Teachers (AMCBT). It was captured by the Internet Archive from 12 December 1998 to 19 December 2005.
Aerospace
Aerospace was the subdomain for the Department of Aerospace Technology pages. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 23 October 1996 to 14 September 2007.
Alexandria, Jaguar and Odin
Alexandria was a subdomain for the Library. Alexandria was captured by the Internet Archive from 21 December 1996 to 8 February 1999. Jaguar was another subdomain for the library. Jaguar was captured by the Internet Archive from 28 April 1999 and 18 April 2022. Odin was another subdomain for the library. Odin was captured by the Internet Archive from 8 May 1997 to 5 May 2024, after 10 February 2016 it was redirected.
Amber
Amber was a Novell NetWare 6 instance that the Internet Archive saved from 13 June 2003 to 25 January 2005. It doesn't seem to have been used for anything.
AMCBT
AMBCT was a subdomain for the Association of College & University Biology Educators. The Association was formerly known as the Association of Midwestern College Biology Teachers (AMCBT). It was captured by the Internet Archive from 1 December 1998 to 28 August 2019, but had stopped being updated from 17 May 2008.
ASGSB
ASGSB was a subdomain for the American Society for Gravitational and Space Biology. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 9 January 1998 and 15 June 2022, but dates from 1997 and was being redirected from 9 September 2007.
Astro
Astro was a subdomain for the John C. Hook Memorial Observatory. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 6 December 1998 and 4 December 2003, after which the captures say "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access on this server."
Baby
Baby was one of the university's main subdomains. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 6 November 1996 and 12 October 2022, after 7 May 1998 it was being redirected to the university's main domain.
Betty and Math
Betty and Math were the subdomains of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Betty was captured by the Internet Archive from 10 February 1998 to 6 August 2003; and Math was captured by the Internet Archive from 4 June 1997 and 27 January 2013.
Biology and Papa
Betty and Papa wwere subdomains of the Department of Life Sciences, Center for Biological Computing. Betty was captured by the Internet Archive from 10 January 1998 and 29 September 2023, but after 29 April 2004 was being redirected. Papa was captured by the Internet Archive from 18 October 1996 to 9 August 2019.
This is one of my favourite old sites. It's just so quirky with the typing computing and dancing frog!
Center for Biological Computing home page
Carbon
Carbon was the subdomain of the Department of Chemistry. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 6 May 2000 to 30 March 2025, but after 2 August 2002 was being redirected.
Career
Career was the subdomain of the Career Center. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 23 December 1996 to 22 May 2024, but after 13 October 2007 was being redirected.
CCS
CCS was the subdomain of College Cooperative Southeast (CCS). The site dates from at least 25 September 1998, and was administered by the Faculty Computing Resource Center (FCRC). It was captured by the Internet Archive from 17 January 1999 to 29 June 2024, but after 19 August 2008 was being redirected.
Cheetah
Cheetah was the subdomain of LUIS, a shared system of catalogs from Indiana State University, Rose Hulman Institute of Technology and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 1 October 1999 to 16 October 2000.
CML
CML was a subdomain managed by the library and contained the Rare Books and Special Collections pages. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 9 January 1998 to 31 May 2003.
CTTC
CTTC was a subdomain for the Construction Technology Transfer Center (CTTC). It was established to help small-to-medium sized construction firms in the Wabash Valley Region gain an edge in overall business productivity by introducing them to new technologies available to the construction industry. The CTTC was a cooperative effort between Indiana State University's Construction Technology Program and the U. S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (CERL) in Champaign, Illinois. The CERL is an Army Corps of Engineers research and development facility affiliated with the University of Illinois.
It was captured by the Internet Archive from 12 April 1997 to 19 May 2001, but the site had been in existence from at least 12 July 1996.
Cube
Cube was a subdomain for the Vice President for Business Affairs. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 4 January 1997 to 10 November 1999, but was being redirected after 9 February 1998.
DriverEd
DriverEd was a subdomain for the Driver and Traffic Safety Center. It was administered by the Faculty Computing Resources Center (FCRC) and dated from at least 13 April 1999. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 24 November 1999 to 20 March 2004, but was being redirected after 30 November 2002.
Emerald and Gopher
Emerald and Gopher appears to have been some sort of test subdomains for the main univeristy site. Emerald was captured by the Internet Archive from 21 December 1996 to 12 December 1998, but existed from at least 16 October 1996. Gopher was captured by the InternetArchive from 21 December 1997 and 5 February 2005.
FCRC
The Faculty Computing Resource Center (archived 4 November 1996) existed to aid faculty and staff to incorporate technology into the curriculum. The subdomain appears to have only been used for their pages and the last time it was archived, without being redirected, was on 2 September 2000. On 26 May 2002, the Internet Archive shwed a new server, FCRCweb.FTR starting. This was home to the Faculty Computing Resource Center.
FCRC2
The FCRC2 was a server run by the Faculty Computing Resource Center (FCRC) and existed to aid faculty and staff to incorporate technology into the curriculum. It was a Windows NT 4.0 Server running on Gateway G6-200 with 64 MB and using Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS).
For faculty, it offered Collabra, a group discussion utility; Calendar, a robust calendaring and scheduling tool; Chat, a real-time communication utility; Web-Database, some sample examples of how database could be connected on the web using different tools, the Search Engine was provided by Microsoft Index Server. They also offered a VPN service.
It was captured by the Internet Archive from 6 December 1998 to 21 January 2004, but just showed the server homepage after 23 July 2001.
FCRC3 and Yeah
FCRC3 and Yeah appear to have been aliases for the same server. The sites provided HyperMail archives, webcam views of the university and space to hold various faculty and student pages, some of which still exist.
A page gives a list of components of the computer running Apache web server. Another page has site statistics provided by Webalizer v0.98 log file analyzer.
Both subdomains were saved by the Internet Archive from December 1998 to 22 June 2003.
FilmLib
FilmLib was a server for the online database of films held by Media Technologies and Resources (MTR). MTR was was created in 1995 as a result of the reorganization of the Audio-Visual Center and Television Services. Services provided by MTR include the selection, acquisition, and distribution of instructional materials, supplies and equipment, video production, maintenance and upkeep of media equipment, instructional development, photographic and computer/graphic design services, audio/video recording and duplication, a lap-top loaner program, photo/digital imaging reproduction, special presentation projects, technical related assistance, and complete professional consultation services.
It was captured by the Internet Archive from 3 November 1999 to 8 October 2000.
Gallery
Gallery was a subdomain that hosted the Permanent Art Collection pages. Unfortunately most of the images were not able to be saved by the Internet Archive which captured the site from 17 January 1999 to 11 May 2008.
Garnet
Garnet was a subdomain that hosted and enabled online classes. It also hosted its own faculty contact pages. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 12 December 12, 1998 to 9 June 2004.
Ghost
Ghost was a subdomain that was administered by the ACNS Tech Team and showed major technology changes across the university. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 25 January 1999 to 8 February 2005.
Homeroom
Homeroom was saved by the Internet Archive from 20 December 1996 to 10 September 2019, but parts of it date from 1995. It was created by the Department of Life Science, Center for Biological Computing in association with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Faculty Computing Resources Center and was used to describe computational teaching technology
This included applications such as HyperMail, a program that accepted E-Mail messages and generated a set of cross-referenced HTML documents; HyperNews, a package of software that supported conferencing on the internet; TeamWave, an application which provided a permanent, shared space for use by a class or other group; Web Course in a Box, which enabled instructors to set up web pages for a course; and WebCamToo, a webserver application which also served live video.
The server was also home to several classes.
Hurricane
Hurricane was the subdomain for the ANSC Student Workers. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 25 December 1996 to 31 December 2008, but was being redirected after 26 November 2003.
Interact
Interact was the subdomain for allowing students to the university databases. Students could apply for admission, look up class schedultes and get financial aid information. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 12 October 1999 to 18 April 2022., but was being redirected after 3 January 2004.
Jessi
Jessi (archived 22 December 1996) was Dr. Dennis Bialaszewski's Web Server and first came into existence late 1995 as an experimental server. It used Apache web server running on a Gateway 2000 computer with an Intel Pentium Processor running at 75Mhz. It was used as a teaching tool for Management Information Systems students in various classes on the usage of Unix as well as HTML editing and other Internet related topics. The server also served as a home for some of ISU's students, faculties, and organizations. It was last archived on 15 May 1998.
Part of Dr. Dennis Bialaszewski's Jessie homepage
Mama
Mama was one of the university's main subdomains. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 5 November 1996 and 17 November 2023, after 29 December 1996 the main page was the Center for Biological Computing by the Department of Life Sciences.
MISNT
MISNT was an experimental server of the Management Information Systems Program (MIS). The purpose of this server was to facilitate the learning process of the Windows NT Server 4.0 Operating System, and to introduce various networking concepts to the classroom. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 1 December 1998 to 13 October 2016.
MWASPP
MWASPP was the subdomain of the Midwestern Section American Society of Plant Physiologists. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 7 December 1998 to 6 September 6, 2019, but dates from 1997 and after 19 May 2001 was blank or redirected.
Physics and PhysicsStudio
Physics was the subdomain of the Physics Deparment. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 12 December 1998 to 1 January 2013, but after 3 March 2012 was redirected.
PhysicsStudio was the Physics Department's laboratory subdomain which consisted of twenty stations, each possessing an Intel Pentium-I based personal computer running Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 with the latest service pack, a Vernier ULI II for PC's, a complete set of probes for physical investigation, LoggerPro for Windows, Interactive Physics 3.0, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Office '97. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 12 December 1998 and 27 December 2005, but after 26 November 2003 was redirected.
Physiol
Pysiol was a short-lived Apache 1.3 server that was only live during October and November 1999. It's purpose was to act as a development server for the Web Course in a Box software, which enabled instructors to set up web pages for a course, before it was moved to the Homeroom server.
The server also contained an index of the courses created using the software.
PQCL
PQCL was the subdomain of the Pedagogical Quarterly of Cognitive Linguistics, Department of English. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 17 January 1999 to 24 January 2002, but dates from 12 September 1998.
Purchasing
The Purchasing & Receiving Department had their own subdomain. The site offered advice and guidelines and was run on a Power Macintosh. It was first captured by the Internet Archive on 30 December 1996, and lastly on 31 December 2008 but after 2 April 2001 was being redirected to a folder on the main university site.
RH111
RH111 was a Debian linux-based server subdomain. It was open to any student, former student, staff, or faculty member of the university to open an account. Unfortunately none of the accounts made were saved. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 25 January 1999 and 19 February 1999.
Sapphire
Sapphire was the successor to the Thunder server and served much the same purpose. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 19 January 2000 until March 2025, but devlopment seems to have stopped some time in 2008. It was run by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and ran Apache web server. None of the student pages were saved by the Internet Archive but interestingly the server ran AWStats log traffic analyzer, and those pages from 2004 to 2006 are available.
Spot
Spot was another server run by the Department of Life Science, Center for Biological Computing in association with the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Faculty Computing Resources Center. It appears to have been active about the same time as the Homeroom server and so similar I'm not sure if they were mirrors of each other.
Thunder
Thunder was a "home page server" set up by the ACNS department and used specifically to host home pages created by Indiana State University students and organizations. It was saved by the Internet Archive between 8 December 1996 and 25 September 2002. It actually ran from 1 August 1996 and was removed from service at the end of 1999. Oddy, a page on the server says that anything left on the server at the end of "1999 was converted to free electrons (deleted), and the server itself was dismantled."
The server was running Linux Slackware 2.1, running on 1.1.72 Kernel. It had 32MB of real memory and 24MB of swap for a total of 56MB of virtual memory. The server software was WN HTTP Server and had 6 licenses for WordPerfect 5.1. Students could create their account and use StatBot statistics and have a Count counter. Instructions for all of this was on the server.
The server also ran a copy of WWWStat, and a page of those statistics from 1 January 1996 to 8 December 1996 were captured by the Internet Archive.
A list of students and organizations that had pages on the server was also provided.
The Sapphire server replaced Thunder when it was taken out of service.
WEB, WWW, WWW1, WWW2, WWW-ISU, and Zirconia
web.indstate.edu was first archived on 10 December 1997. After 28 February 2008 most pages were rdirected to indstate.edu. www1.indstate.edu was first archived on 5 January 1997 and most pages are redirected to indstate.edu. The same for www2.indstate.edu.
WISU
WUSI was the subdomain for WUSI-FM, a non-commercial, educational radio station. WISU is staffed by approximately 40 students who perform all daily aspects of running a radio station; including logs, production, and on-air performance. It was captured by the Internet Archive from 11 November 1998 to 12 August 2023, but after 27 January 2013 was being redirected.
Interesting Pages
While working at the university and writing this page, I came across pages that were unusual or intersting in other ways...
An interesting page is the one showing the server statistics archived on 5 February 1998. At some point the log statistics program WWWStat was run on the servers.
You won't find much on this page about the sites of the university after 2000, but one subdomain I found was the site at debs.indstate.edu. It was saved by the Internet Archive from 21 March 2003 to 22 September 2004. It is interesting because it is a directory listing of 738 scanned documents dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The listing just consists of the scanned names of the documents and the ones I looked at all deal with social conditions in the U.S. Given the name of the subdomain the documents may have had something to do with Eugene V. Debs, a labour organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president.
The Changing Web Face of ISU
The following pages can be found on the Internet Archive. The following screenshots are from March 1996 to June 2013.
After June 2013, Indiana State University moved to a Content Management System (CMS) and the homepage has stayed the same, but sometimes with major changes, since then.
The Changing Web Face of the College of Business
Like many other institutions the Scott College of Business has grown and changed over the years. Its beginning was the formation of the Commerce Department at Indiana State Normal School in 1918. It was located in the Old Main building and chaired by Shepherd Young. In 1940, it moved to second floor of Fine Arts and Commerce Building.
In 1962, it was renamed as the Department of Business Education and moved to the renovated Science Building, formerly known as the Classroom Building, on north side of the quadrangle. The department was later renamed as the Division of Business.
In 1964, the School of Business was created with Dr. Paul Muse as dean. Dr. Muse was the Chairman of the Department of Commerce from 1947 to 1964. Dr. Muse remained as dean until his retirement in 1971.
In 1980, the School of Business was relocated to Statesman Towers on Sycamore between 8th and 9th streets. In 2004, the School was renamed as a College, and in 2010, renamed again to the Scott College of Business. In August 2012, it moved into a home in downtown Terre Haute - Federal Hall.
Click here for a slightly fuller history of the Scott College of Business.
The first indstate.eu/business pages were archived on 12 January 1998. This seems to be an unfinished attempt as it is a text only page with only two working links, one to the Accounting and the other to the Systems and Decision Sciences departments.
A better School of Business site appeared at indstate.edu/schbus, which was first archived on 22 April 2003. The homepage was changed to the College of Business on 13 October 2004. The last time that was archived was on 8 November 2007. After that the page was redirected back to ww1.indstate.eu/business
Pages from indstate.edu/schbus
The following images were taken from www1.indstate.edu/business
Sources & Resources
Adobe Photoshop 2.5 - Web Design Museum
Aldus SuperPaint 3.5 - Cryan
GIF Converter - Gryphel Project
Gopher (protocol) - Wikipedia
HyperMail (Internet Archive)
HyperNews (Internet Archive)
Internet Archive
JOVE - Wikipedia
NetWare - Wikipedia
OmniPage Page Univesity of California, Berkeley
Power Macintosh 8500 - Wikipedia
TeamWave (Internet Archive)
Wayback Machine
Web Course in a Box - Virginia Commonwealth University (Internet Archive)
WebCamToo (Internet Archive)
WebSTAR - Wikipedia
What Were Server-Side Image Maps? - Rick Carlino
WN Server - Northwestern University (Internet Archive)
WWWStat - University of California, Irvine (Internet Archive)