Yes, the forum started very early.... black screen with white letters on a Unix machine
must have been 94 or 95On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 10:22 PM, Andrew Davidhazy <andpph@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Gentlemen,
Well, the actual records of the very first exchanges on the PhotoForum mail list have been archived in a place I can not find right now.
I hope they still exist. But with various computer and memory crashes over the years it is quite possible they are gone. The Wayback machine only works (sometimes) for items that were on the web. Once the PF had a webpage it was listed on the machine. But I think PF preceded that. Marilyn Dalrymple I believe was an early subscriber.
In any case the list started as email exchanges only. I redistributed the incoming mail myself. “By hand” so to speak. This lasted about 2 months or so when the school installed the listserv program. I probably had much to do to encourage this. This happened either in late 93 or late 94. I believe it was 93. Once the listserv program took care of the redistribution things became a bit more streamlined. We are using the same system today as then. There was a move to move to a web based list but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. I think list serve does not take up much space or cause headaches to the computer admins.
Now the gallery was started I believe in 1996 - I was very unfamiliar with HTLM programming and I struggled quite a bit trying to make it work. But there was one among you (Whose name at this moment escapes me but who moved from programming to photography … and maybe back to programming!) who wrote the code that made the assembly of the photographs easier. And once I became comfortable with it it became even easier. What used to take me maybe 1 1/2 - 2 hours now takes about 30 - 45 minutes - mostly because I set things up as they come in instead of waiting for the collection as a whole. Plus these days there are fewer photographs. In the beginning it was not unusual to have 12 each week with 12 more waiting to be installed the following week.
BTW, I unfortunately never had the assistance of the bevy of female students who sign-off the gallery each week. I did want to make believe I did but, alas, ’twas not so. It would have been fun!
So, I am sorry I can not be more specific and conclusive. But hard records are nowhere to be found.
Andy
On Dec 20, 2014, at 9:26 PM, Eichhorn, Roger <eichhorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Andy,
>
> Please settle this thing once and for all.
>
> Best, Roger
>
