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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 day by day on the World Large Internet as we speak, providing readers world wide rapid entry to many of the day by 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 method 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 job drive, which included Mr. Lewis, to work on a undertaking known as The New York Occasions within the 12 months 2000. Mr. Lewis this week shared the main points of the undertaking 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 could 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 stated championed science and expertise reporting, assigned Mr. Lewis to cowl the “rise of the web.”
Sooner or later, “I requested permission to register an internet area for The Occasions, and was informed 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 internet web page on the area, so folks bought an error alert once they tried to go to it.) And Mr. Lewis scooped up nytimes.com round late 1993 or early 1994.
In mid-1995, Mr. Lewis bought a name from Gordon Thompson, The Occasions’s supervisor of web companies, 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 gained 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 could be confused with the web deal with of New York Phone.)
In an electronic mail on Friday, Mr. Markoff stated that he had registered the nyt.com area earlier than there have been registration charges. However Mr. Lewis paid a $35 payment for nytimes.com. Mr. Lewis stated he was completely satisfied 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.
Just a few days later, the web site was dwell to the world. Mr. Lewis was not concerned within the launch, although he lined 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 as we speak, each URLs ship readers to The Occasions’s house web page.
However there’s one downside: Mr. Lewis stated he by no means obtained his $35 reimbursement.
We’re engaged on that.
