Alan Emtage


Alan Emtage conceived and implemented the first version of Archie, a pre-Web Internet search engine for locating material in public FTP archives. It is widely considered the world's first Internet search engine.

Life

Alan Emtage was born in Barbados, the son of Sir Stephen and Lady Emtage. He attended high school at Harrison College from 1975 to 1983, where he graduated at the top of his class, winning the Barbados Scholarship.
In 1983 Emtage entered McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, studying for an honors Bachelor's degree in computer science which was followed by a Master's degree in 1987 from which he graduated in 1991. Emtage was part of the team that brought the first Internet link to eastern Canada in 1986. In 1989 while a student and working as a systems administrator for the School of Computer Science, Emtage conceived and implemented the original version of the Archie search engine, the world's first Internet search engine.
In 1992, Emtage along with Peter Deutsch, also a McGill graduate, formed Bunyip Information Systems in Montreal—the world's first company expressly founded for and dedicated to providing Internet information services with a licensed commercial version of the Archie search engine.
Emtage was a founding member of the Internet Society and went on to create and chair several working groups at the Internet Engineering Task Force, the standard-setting body for the Internet. Working with other pioneers such as Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, Mark McCahill and Jon Postel, Emtage co-chaired the Uniform Resource Identifier working group which created the standard for Uniform Resource Locators.
On September 18, 2017 Emtage was inducted as an Innovator by the Internet Society into the Internet Hall of Fame in a ceremony in Los Angeles.
On October 20, 2019 Emtage was conferred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from the University of the West Indies.
Emtage has spoken and lectured on Internet Information Systems and is chief technical officer at Mediapolis, a Web engineering company in New York City.

Works