Less than a decade ago, when the Web was a new medium and the dot-com revolution was the mere gleam in the eye of a crazed few, we all just make it up as we went along...

The TerraQuest site was seminal in the evolution of live expeditions on the Internet. For years it captured the imagination of its audience -- primary and secondary school students, curious Web surfers, scientists and media geeks -- as well as fans of travel and travelers themselves. From Virtual Antarctica, through Virtual Galapagos, and finally High Sights with Eric Weihnmayer, TerraQuest went where no one had gone before, and had fun doing it.

Key figures in the TerraQuest story include producer and photographer Jonathan Chester, who came up with the idea of wiring a tour boat to Antarctica; designer Brad Johnson, who first turned his creative attention to the Web with these award-winning projects; Richard Bangs, executive producer and co-founder of Mountain Travel-Sobek; Gary Schumacher, our man at co-sponsor World Travel Partners; and photographer Denise Rocco, who added her energy and genius for promotion to the later adventures.

TerraQuest fell off the face of the World Wide Web in mid-2002, thanks to "domain name theft," but is back up under a slightly different URL. Launch it here or explore On Assignment: Ecuador to see what we were up to, back in the day. . .