amz.nnov.ru was the website of the Arzamas Machine-Building Plant, an enterprise in the town of Arzamas in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. It ran in the Nizhny Novgorod domain nnov.ru from at least 1998 to 2003; the page was hosted by the "INFORIS" Internet centre, a Nizhny Novgorod provider — its copyright notice stood in the footer of the home page, and the webmaster's address was there as well[1].

What the home page looked like

The earliest surviving snapshot is dated 25 January 1999. The home page in it is extremely spare: the heading "ARZAMAS MACHINE-BUILDING PLANT", a character-encoding selector line — "KOI | WIN | DOS | MAC | LAT", a counter reading "4178th visitor since 25.02.1998", the address webmaster@inforis.ru and the line "Copyright © 1994-1998 Internet centre 'INFORIS'"[1]. The date the counter was started, 25 February 1998, is the only precise evidence about its own age that the site left behind: the year 1994 in the copyright notice belongs not to the plant but to the Internet centre[1].

By the snapshot of 1 February 2001 an "ENGLISH" item had been added to the encoding line — a link to an English-language version[2]. The counter showed 5392 visitors[2] — about 1200 more over two years. After that it never changed: the same 5392 stands in the snapshot of 4 June 2002[3] and in the snapshot of 26 January 2003[4].

What the plant listed about itself

In the 1999 snapshot the home page holds nothing but the heading, the encoding switch and the service footer. Beginning with the 2001 snapshot, a long list of products appears in the text version of the page — an unbroken string of names and factory indexes, repeated word for word in 2002[3] and in 2003[4]. It opens like this: "Arzamas Machine-Building Plant: production of military and special-purpose vehicles, GAZelle vans and tank trucks, automobile spare parts, furniture"[2].

The string then goes on with models and their factory indexes: GAZ-5903 — the BTR-80, GAZ-59034 — the BTR-80A, GAZ-5923 — the BTR-90, GAZ-59033 — the BREM-K, GAZ-59039 — the BMM, the GAZ-3937 and GAZ-39371 "Vodnik", the GAZ-5903V "Vetluga", the GAZ-5903Zh, the GAZ-3934 "SIAM" — a special cash-in-transit vehicle, the GAZ-59037 amphibious all-terrain vehicle, the GAZ-59038 amphibious vehicle with a hydraulic aerial platform, the ML-103 cut-to-length timber truck, and also the GAZ-5940 and GAZ-59402[2]. A separate run lists vans built on the "GAZelle" chassis with indexes from GAZ-3302-20-0000310 to GAZ-3302-20-0000340[2]. Individual units and systems are named too: a turret mount, a twin machine gun, an ammunition load, an independent heater, an air-conditioning system, communications equipment, a radio set, intercom units[2]. The geographic reference stood right inside that list, among the vehicle indexes: "Arzamas", "Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[2].

Neither a postal address nor a telephone number nor any names appear in the surviving snapshots of the home page: the only contact the site gave for itself was the webmaster's mailbox at "INFORIS", and even that is visible only in the 1999 snapshot[1].

Its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site's rating in the nn.ru catalogue was taken from the Counter.nn.ru counter, where amz.nnov.ru was listed under number 1010[5]. In the snapshot of the section "Companies (Enterprises): Auto" from 25 July 2002, sorted by rating, the plant's site stands first of six: a rating of 137 against 78 for the Zavolzhye Tracked Vehicle Plant, whereas OAO GAZ, OAO Zavolzhye Motor Plant, OAO Pavlovsky Avtobus (Pavlovo Bus) and the Arzamas-based OAO KOMMASH (municipal machinery) had no rating in that section at all[5]. The figures are modest even by the standards of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, but within its own section the site of a plant from a district town ran ahead of the sites of far larger enterprises in the region. How this measurement works and what the counter's rating figures mean is examined in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

How it closed

The last snapshot in which the page is still in place is dated 26 January 2003. Its content is the same as two years earlier, down to the frozen counter and the line "Copyright © 1994-2000 'INFORIS'"[4]: over the last two years of its life the page was not updated. The inventory records the web archive's last request to the address on 7 August 2003, but no snapshot with content survives from that date. In the inventory on which this article is based, amz.nnov.ru is marked dead and the "moved to" field is empty: where the plant's web presence went, and whether it went anywhere at all, the snapshots do not say.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 1999 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalogue, section «Companies (Enterprises): Auto», sorted by rating, 2002 (archive)