Must Be Art Weblog

I was asked to write up a page or two on the “genesis and early development” of the AMSAT.org web site. Here is what I submitted. The new webmaster is going to fill in the later history, add some comments on coming attractions, and wrap it up into a paper for the upcoming AMSAT Space Symposium.

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Once upon a time, in the late 1980’s and into 1992, AMSAT was paying real money for key volunteers to use a commercial dial-up electronic messaging system called GTE TELEMAIL, and this budget item was becoming a problem. A cheaper alternative was needed so that more volunteers could be included. The obvious choice at the time was CompuServe, but that still cost money for each volunteer added to the system. A dial-up BBS could be run at a modest cost, but long distance was still too expensive for the users and multi-user operation would be a big deal. The discussion went on while Internet email snuck up on us.

Tom Clark (now K3IO, then W3IWI) began operating a spare IBM PC AT under his desk at Goddard Space Flight Center as tomcat.gsfc.nasa.gov. “Tomcat” (Tom C’s AT) supported the use of Internet email for AMSAT functions by providing callsign mail aliases (callsign@tomcat.gsfc.nasa.gov) and bulletin mailing lists for the AMSAT News Service (ANS) bulletins and Keplerian elements (KEPS). It was also an FTP server for projects such as the original Microsat development[1] and the TAPR/AMSAT DSP Project.[2] Tomcat was operated semi-manually and began to take up too much of Tom’s time, while at the same time it became more and more important to AMSAT communications.

At the 1991 AMSAT Space Symposium in Los Angeles, an informal session about Tomcat drew a crowded room full of interested people. At that time there were over 200 users, and system overload was starting to set in. The Board could see that it had become an essential resource for AMSAT.

In May of 1992, AMSAT acquired a surplus Sun 3 workstation. Through the efforts of Brian Kantor, WB6CYT, it was installed in the network machine room at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and registered as amsat.org. Tom put out a call for a new volunteer to take over day-to-day operation of the system, and Paul Williamson, KB5MU, was selected for the job. The new system started out with nearly 300 users and three mailing lists: ANS, KEPS, and a discussion “bulletin board” called AMSAT-BB. It also took over FTP duties. Other services such as private project mailing lists and additional public mailing lists (e.g., SAREX) were already in the plans.

Not everybody had Internet email in those days. Generally Internet access was at work or at school, and individuals at home had no affordable way to get on. That changed when CompuServe began supporting email to and from the Internet for users of its system. AMSAT was able to replace the big TELEMAIL bill with a few CompuServe accounts for key volunteers without other Internet access, at an estimated savings of more than $20,000 per year.[3] Everybody else had to provide their own Internet access.

This was a year before the release of Mosaic, the first graphical browser for a new thing called the World Wide Web. Email was the main thing. FTP was a workhorse for distributing files and software, but not very nice to use. The internet community was experimenting with ways to do more, but nothing really clicked until the web.

Two years later, at the 1994 Space Symposium in Orlando, Paul made a presentation to the AMSAT Board about the World Wide Web. From the minutes of that Board meeting:[4]

He told about a powerful extension of the Internet called the “World-Wide Web” that is capable of interfacing with sources including not only text, but photos, movies, audio and hypertext documents. This can serve as an on-demand magazine or as a library. As such, it could be used to provide a source for AMSAT archival material. He offered to establish such a capability and make it available to AMSAT at no cost to the organization. The Board accepted this offer with thanks.[5]

The Board also allocated funds for a hardware upgrade to a more powerful PC-based platform with more disk space. AMSAT President Bill Tynan, W3XO, created a new Electronic Publications department to own the budget item for these funds, and appointed Paul Vice President of that department.

Within a short time, with more help from Brian, the new amsat.org machine was online at UCSD, and serving http://www.amsat.org to a world that was just catching on about the web. Paul built the initial pages by hand, of course, since that was the only way to do it. They were mostly just plain text.

From nearly the beginning, occasional front-page feature articles were published. The first feature article called attention to a series of visible passes of the Russian space station Mir in December, 1994. It’s still available on the web, in its original location.[6] We ventured into multimedia with “Sounds from the First Satellites”[7] by Roy Welch, W0SL, and posted photographs from very early in the Phase 3D development project.[8] The archive of downloadable software grew, alongside the listings of software and other products made available by AMSAT as fundraisers. The goal was to be the preeminent online resource for amateur radio satellites.

Paul envisioned the AMSAT web site as primarily a reference source. People would come to the site to find specific information. They would probably already know something about AMSAT and amateur satellites. Casual walk-in traffic wasn’t really expected to be heavy. News coverage was left to the AMSAT News Service. ANS bulletins were of course available on the web site, but the front page wasn’t news-oriented at all. Only major events of lasting interest to AMSAT would get any headlines on the front page. This kind of semi-static site design was increasingly out of sync with the dotcom-era web.

The 1994 web design evolved gradually over nine years. It got a lot bigger, and many new features were added. The basic design, however, remained pretty much the same: a hierarchy of text-based links rooted in a text-heavy, mostly static front page.[9] It was overflowing with information, some fresh and some stale, and its hierarchy was getting difficult to navigate. The aesthetic design of the site was dated.

At the beginning of 2004 Emily Clarke (now N1DID, then W0EEC) undertook a complete redesign of the site. The new design was announced to AMSAT-BB (as a beta test) on June 22, 2004.[10]

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[1] “AMSAT’s MICROSAT/PACSAT PROJECT”, Tom Clark, W3IWI, in the Proceedings of the AMSAT-NA Sixth Space Symposium and Annual Meeting, 1988.

[2] “The DSP Project Update”, Dr. Thomas Clark, W3IWI and Dr. Robert McGwier, N4HY, ibid.

[3] “AMSAT E-Mail”, Drew Deskur, KA1M, The AMSAT Journal, Vol. 15, No. 5, November/December 1992.

[4] “Minutes of the AMSAT Board of Director’s [sic] Meeting held October 9-10 in Orlando, Florida.”, trans. Bill Hook, W3QBC, The AMSAT Journal, Vol. 17, No. 6, November/December 1994.

[5] This is how to get things done in a volunteer organization: volunteer to do them yourself.

[6] http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/mir-xmas.html

[7] http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/firstsat.html

[8] For example, http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/scope/scope.html

[9] The last version, more or less, is still visible at http://www.amsat.org/amsat/AmsatHomeOld.html

[10] http://www.amsat.org/amsat/archive/amsat-bb/200406/msg00390.html