Website History

Walter S. Arnold first launched his website in the late summer of 1994, the very first sculptor with a personal website. At that time there were only a total of about 3,000 to 4,000 websites in what was called “the world wide web” or “the information superhighway”. A year later there were 19,000, Now some estimates say there are over 1.6 billion websites, with 15,000 new ones launched each day.

Initially writing the site in notepad and figuring out HTML coding by looking at the source code of other web pages, he also learned how to make graphic images that would load quickly in the days of 9600 and 14.4k modems. To give you an idea, back then even if you had a really great 14.4 connection, a single one-megabyte image would take 70 to 90 seconds to load, so image optimization was critical.

The site first got listed in Yahoo that fall; the listing required sending an e-mail to a couple of college students who were creating their web index in their Stanford dorm room during their spare time. They didn’t even register the yahoo.com domain name until January of 1995. Since the concept of online search engines was still being figured out, web directories, like telephone books, were published and available in bookstores to help people navigate the web. Walter’s site appeared in a number of them.

As a pioneering artist who understood web graphics, Walter was asked to write a number of articles for computer graphics magazines in the mid 90’s, explaining how to create images for websites. In 1996 he was tapped as technical editor for a book titled “Looking Good Online, The Ultimate Resource for Creating Effective Web Designs”, written by Steve Bain.

It all makes for an interesting balance, cutting edge computer design and carving stone with 100 year old chisels and ageless techniques.