A few historical notes: Paul Flaherty (1964-2006) was a principal engineer at the the Digital Equipment Network Research Laboratory. Paul is credited with havi

A few historical notes: Paul Flaherty (1964-2006) was a principal engineer at the the Digital Equipment Network Research Laboratory. Paul is credited with having the idea for Alta Vista, but I think that it was Andy Freeman's sudden flash of insight that led to Paul's development. Paul had been in Italy at a trade show; when he returned he talked with Brian Reid, who headed the Lab, about the need to find a demonstration project that showed off the top-of-the-line Alpha computers. Paul and Andy and I used to have lunch together frequently. At one point, just after Paul returned from Italy, we were talking about Internet search at lunch. I'd been using the Magellan search engine and had some comments about how useful a better search engine would be. Andy began talk about the problem and sketched out how a better search engine might work and how a web crawler could gather the information needed to do an index. Paul listened and then went back to his office and enlisted Brian Reid's help in resourcing a search engine project. Brian got Louis Monier and Mike Burrows involved. The three of them did the hard work of reducing the concept to a real program running on an Alpha computer. Alta Vista was an instant success with Alta Vista computers overflowing Paul's office and cluttering the hall nearby as the team worked to satisfy market demands for search.