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On Jan. 22, 1996, in an article tucked away on Web page D7, The New York Occasions introduced the general public launch of its web site.
“The New York Occasions begins publishing every day on the World Vast Net at the moment, providing readers world wide speedy entry to a lot of the every day newspaper’s contents,” said the article, by Peter H. Lewis. “The digital newspaper (deal with: http:/www.nytimes.com) is a part of a technique to increase the readership of The Occasions.”
Mr. Lewis had as soon as owned that very URL.
In 1985, the Occasions editors A.M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb gathered a process pressure, which included Mr. Lewis, to work on a venture referred to as The New York Occasions within the 12 months 2000. Mr. Lewis this week shared the main points of the venture and his Occasions work in an electronic mail, from which a lot of this account is drawn.
Then an editor for the Science part and a private computer systems columnist, Mr. Lewis recalled predicting that by the millennium, Occasions articles can be learn on private laptop screens, in our on-line world.
“I recall Artie dismissing me with a wave,” Mr. Lewis wrote of Mr. Gelb.
Years later, the editor Invoice Stockton, who Mr. Lewis mentioned championed science and know-how reporting, assigned Mr. Lewis to cowl the “rise of the web.”
In some unspecified time in the future, “I requested permission to register an online area for The Occasions, and was advised no,” Mr. Lewis wrote within the electronic mail. “A number of of us thought that was shortsighted.”
One other reporter, John Markoff, who had joined The Occasions to cowl laptop networking in 1988, had registered nyt.com a while after beginning his function. (He used it for electronic mail; he didn’t arrange an online web page on the area, so folks obtained an error alert after they tried to go to it.) And Mr. Lewis scooped up nytimes.com round late 1993 or early 1994.
In mid-1995, Mr. Lewis obtained a name from Gordon Thompson, The Occasions’s supervisor of web providers, saying the paper needed to go surfing as “The New York Occasions in Our on-line world” and wanted the nytimes.com area, which had received out in inner discussions over the shorter nyt.com URL registered by Mr. Markoff. (Per Mr. Markoff’s account, The Occasions thought the three-letter URL can be confused with the web deal with of New York Phone.)
In an electronic mail on Friday, Mr. Markoff mentioned that he had registered the nyt.com area earlier than there have been registration charges. However Mr. Lewis paid a $35 price for nytimes.com. Mr. Lewis mentioned he was glad handy the area over — so long as he was reimbursed. He transferred possession of the URL to The Occasions, which activated the web site on Jan. 19, 1996, from the Hippodrome workplace constructing in Manhattan.
A couple of days later, the web site was stay to the world. Mr. Lewis was not concerned within the launch, although he coated the occasion for the newspaper.
As Mr. Markoff wrote in 2017, he finally handed over nyt.com, on the situation that he get to maintain his electronic mail, markoff@nyt.com, which he did till 2016. And at the moment, each URLs ship readers to The Occasions’s dwelling web page.
However there’s one downside: Mr. Lewis mentioned he by no means acquired his $35 reimbursement.
We’re engaged on that.