Wide area information server

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Wide Area Information Servers or WAIS is a distributed text searching system that uses the protocol standard ANSI Z39.50 to search index databases on remote computers. The WAIS protocol and servers were primarily evangelized by Thinking Machines Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thinking Machines produced a WAIS server which ran on their CM-1 and CM-5 supercomputers. WAIS clients existed for various operating systems including Windows, Macintosh and Unix. With the advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s and the bankruptcy of Thinking Machines in 1995, the primitive interface of the WAIS system quickly gave way to Web based search engines. There are few if any WAIS servers in existence on the Internet today.

One of the developers of WAIS was Brewster Kahle, who left Thinking Machines to found WAIS Inc in Menlo Park, California with Bruce Gilliat. After selling WAIS to AOL in May 1995 for $15 million, Kahle and Gilliat founded the Internet Archive and then Alexa Internet.

Note 1: WAIS libraries are most often found on the Internet.

Note 2: WAIS allows users to discover and access information resources on the network without regard to their physical location.

Note 3: WAIS software uses the client-server model.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C