From the article, &quot;After its creation in 1991 at the University of Minnesota, use of Gopher exploded.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m a Gopher. That is, I&#x27;m an alumnus of the University of Minnesota. My first Internet account was based on my alumni relationship with the university, which gave me access to their large dial-up modem pool, and a distribution of a software suite called Minuet (Minnesota Internet Users Essential Tool).[1] Minuet included FTP and other standard protocols, and also had a Gopher client built-in (of course).<p>I used Minuet to browse around the Internet for a few months after getting my account, and definitely used it at first to access Usenet newsgroups. On the Usenet newsgroup about homeschooling, I noticed that one frequent poster had a funny-looking string of symbols in his signature block, which I learned was the URL for his website about homeschooling, which is still alive and well.[2] So I downloaded a Web browser (finding advice about how to do that in one of the first popular books on using the Internet, borrowed from my friendly public library), which must have been an early version of Mosaic. Wow, wow, and wow. The integrated images in HTML documents are what won me over to preferring the Web to Gopherspace, as well as the nonhierarchical hypertext links. Following the URLs given in the library to some early cool websites was all I needed to get hooked. An early version of my own website about homeschooling[3] was on the Web by a year later, and I had my own domain for it a year or so after that. Now I live online, as you see here. Gopher got some people started in reading reference documents online, and then Web browsers finished that job and also got us talking in new discussion formats that have largely supplanted Usenet.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;foldoc.org&#x2F;Minnesota%20Internet%20Users%20Essential%20Tool" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;foldoc.org&#x2F;Minnesota%20Internet%20Users%20Essential%2...</a><p>[2] Jon&#x27;s Homeschool Resources<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.midnightbeach.com&#x2F;hs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.midnightbeach.com&#x2F;hs&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;learninfreedom.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;learninfreedom.org&#x2F;</a>