Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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Origins of WBI - Web 'Intermediaries'

Author:	Lawrence Lee
Posted:	6/11/1999; 3:21:21 PM
Topic:	Java, Servlets, XML-RPC
Msg #:	7242 (In response to 7240)
Prev/Next:	7241 / 7243

IBM's Almaden Research Center documented this in the (unofficial) WBI Story.

Origins of WBI
So around Christmas, 1995, one of us wrote the first version of WBI in about a week --- in Perl. It was quick and dirty and slow, but it did it all. It was even multithreaded. Of course, we hadn't come up with the name WBI yet, so it was called the Memory Browser, which later mutated into Personal Web Agent (PWA). This last name clung to us for many months. We went around and gave many demos, showing off history and traffic lights and other simple functions to IBM executives and others.

The name WBI
And after much anguish, we hit on the name WBI by flipping the letters IBM over and having the audacity to pronounce it "webby".

WBI is a product of the User System Ergonomics Research group at Almaden.

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