Gopher

A browsing and searching system that lets you look for and retrieve documents of interest from all over the Internet. Unlike FTP and Archie, it is a menu-based system that doesn't require you to know the details of host or file names. Developed at the University of Minnesota, it was named after the school's mascot. Early on in the days of the Internet, this sort of text-based searching was most people's first choice. However, with the increasing use of the graphical Web, Gopher sites are not nearly as popular.