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198. Historical
In December, 1991, I attended a “Cellulose 91” Conference in New Orleans. I had organized a symposium for the Cellulose, Paper and Textile Division of the American Chemical Society. At the end of the symposium, I conducted a Roundtable Discussion, and one of the topics raised by Dr. Tony Sarko was the necessity to “stay ahead” and organize a list-server for researchers interested in cellulose on the Internet. Tony left his e-mail address on the overhead slide for those interested in establishing a network for cellulose researchers (Fig. 1(a)). It was this singular idea that launched the CEN. Recall that these were before the days of web browsers and the World Wide Web as we now know it. A year later, no e-mail network had been established, but I had not forgotten Tony’s Cellulose 91 proposal. Thus, in 1993, I e-mailed a group of cellulose researchers asking them for their opinions about the establishment of a Cellulose Electronic Network (CEN) list-server. Here is a direct quote from my e-mail to researchers on October 18, 1993. “Our network is the CEN network (not to be confused with the CNN network), although we may have items that are just as newsworthy! May the Glucan Chains Be With You (parallel or anti-parallel)!” In February 1994, through the assistance of Richard Mendez of the Computer Center of the University of Texas, Richard Santos, and Bob Nagy of the Botany Department, we set up an e-mail group which became the CEN. During 1994 and into mid-1995, the CEN worked very well, and several hundred researchers signed on. Access to the Internet was revolutionized with the introduction of web browsers and web servers, and in September 1995, we inaugurated the CEN web site with a complete Graphical Interface (GUI), largely through the creativity of Sean Megason (Fig. 1(b)), an undergraduate student who at that time had developed expertise in the fledging field of web site development. Sean and I set up the first web server for the UT Botany Department in 1995, and the same year, we moved the CEN membership to the web page. Our first CEN home page is shown in Fig. 1(c). The web server for the Botany Department and the CEN was a very expensive ($4500) Gateway PC which we set up in the corner of my laboratory in Painter Hall on the UT campus (Fig. 1(b)). Sean Megasan was the first web master for our server which was given the alias, “bluebonnet”. During all of these years, we have maintained the same web address: http://www.botany.utexas.edu After two years of operation, disaster struck. A hard disk failure coinciding with incomplete backups delayed the repair of the CEN for several months, but ultimately we were “back on the air”. During the next 5 years, the CEN attracted worldwide interest of researchers in cellulose (as evidenced by more than 400 individuals from 50 different countries who signed on the CEN over the years). In the meantime, my longtime colleague, Richard Santos, had developed interests in software, PCs, and web page development. I asked him to be the web master for the CEN and RMB lab pages. Several years ago, Richard approached me about upgrading the CEN. Slowly and in between numerous other tasks which took priority, Richard began to work on this project. After many revisions and suggestions from me and many others, the CEN was revised and dramatically improved. It was launched formally on April 17, 2002 when I presented it to a conference in Uppsala, Sweden.
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Last modified May 6, 2008.
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Malcolm Brown, Jr.