blurb illustrations

(Click on reduced images to get the full-scale image -- all relatively small, sizes as indicated in parentheses)

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Photo. Order from Chaos: xxx.lanl.gov, currently an HP 9000/735, in action on the floor under a table in a corner of the author's office.

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Figure 1. Bar chart shows combined number of users for the following e-print archives:

High energy particle theory (formal), started Aug 91
Algebraic geometry, started Feb 92
High energy particle theory (phenomenological), started Mar 92
Astrophysics, started Apr 92
Condensed matter theory, started Apr 92
Computational and lattice physics, started Apr 92
Functional Analysis, started Apr 92
General relativity / Quantum cosmology, started Jul 92
Nuclear theory, started Oct 92
Non-linear Sciences, started Mar 93
Economics, started Jul 93
High energy experimental physics, started Apr 94
Chemical Physics, started Apr 94
Computation and Language, started Apr 94

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Figure 2. The sample screen above shows two user interfaces for accessing the e-print archives. The window in the upper left corner shows abstracts received via e-mail, and the window in the lower left corner shows the graphical user interface provided by a WorldWideWeb client (in this case OmniWeb.app running under NeXTstep) accessing the frontpage http://xxx.lanl.gov/ (the underlined text signifies network hyperlinks which bring up new hypertext when clicked upon). A paper extracted from the e-print archive appears in the window on the right side, where it can be read or sent to a printer.

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Figure 3. This screen grab shows another WorldWideWeb client, Mosaic, accessing the "form interface" on xxx.lanl.gov. The Motif "buttons" allow the client to choose an archive to view monthly listings, daily abstracts received, or to search the title/author listings of selected archives for given time periods. Listings are displayed in hypertext with included hyperlinks that retrieve paper abstracts or full text in either TeX or Postscript format.

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Figure 4. The number of http (hypertext transfer protocol) requests to the WorldWideWeb interface on xxx.lanl.gov per day starting from Jan 1, 1994. The seven day periodicity is evidence that many physicists still do not have readily available network access on weekends.