It was not, in fact, totally centralized. In the early 90s, my middle school had a server that you could phone into to get the weather (I don't quite remember i

It was not, in fact, totally centralized. In the early 90s, my middle school had a server that you could phone into to get the weather (I don't quite remember if it was a full forecast or not, I think it was), and that server was managed by a Maths teacher and students who would enter the school ½h/1h earlier to grab the data and update the page. I guess you could say that was my first experience as what would later be called webmastering.