Before Gopher existed, there was no organizational system
on the Internet. Sites weren't connected to each other, and the only way you could get to a certain site was if your friends could give you its name and URL. This wasn't a problem when the Net was small, but as the number of sites and users increased, the need for some order grew as well.
Gopher was originally developed in 1991 by the University of Minnesota. Its primary purpose was to assist in the distribution of campus information, and to organize available Internet resources in order to make them easy to access.
