Archie is the search tool for FTP archives often called the first Internet search engine.
Created by Alan Emtage at McGill University, Archie indexed directory listings from public anonymous FTP sites. It let users search file names across scattered archives at a time when finding software usually depended on word of mouth, mailing lists, or manually browsing servers.
Archie did not search the text inside files and was not originally a web search engine. It searched FTP listings, making it a pre-Web information-retrieval system. The service first appeared in 1990 and later became available through Telnet, email, client software, and the Web.
The names Jughead and Veronica are common mix-ups: both were later search tools for Gopher, not FTP. Archie’s name came from “archive” without the “v,” not from the comic-book character.