model.nn.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod enterprise NPP "Model" (Scientific-Production Enterprise "Model"), which designed and manufactured special-purpose process equipment, computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools, and control systems for industry[1]. The Nizhny Novgorod affiliation is visible right on the home page: the site's contacts were phone numbers (831) 432-85-63 and 434-97-30, fax (831) 432-85-63, and the mailbox model@nn.ru[1]. In the Nizhny Novgorod site directory on nn.ru, the address was listed under "Firms (Enterprises): Industry: Machine Tools and Equipment" as "NPP \"Model\"" with the note "Development and modernization of CNC systems"[3]. The Wayback Machine crawled the home page 73 times: the first capture is dated January 8, 2002, and the last February 22, 2020[6].

What the site looked like

The home page was laid out as a manufacturing firm's business card: the heading "NPP-Model", a short menu of five items — "About us", "Publications", "Vacancies", "Contacts", "Home" — and two columns titled "SERVICES" and "PRODUCTS"[1]. It had no news, no forum, and no product catalog: the whole text amounted to a list of what the enterprise could do. No internal sections of the site survived in the preserved set of captures — only the text of the home page remains.

The services column listed the design and manufacture of custom process equipment, mechanization and automation equipment; the creation of process-equipment control systems, industrial automated control (ASUTP) facilities, and diagnostic, data-collection and data-processing systems; and design and process preparation of production for CNC machine parts[1]. The products column listed special-purpose process equipment and CNC machine tools, complete control cabinets — "including power electronics, CNC control units, and drives", as the home page put it — as well as drives, software, and, on a separate line, a diagnostic system for alternating-current equipment at traction substations[1]. Besides the city phone numbers, the signature block carried a second mailbox on a free service, model-npp@yandex.ru; the page gave no postal address for the enterprise[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was registered in the Counter.nn.ru counter under number 2687, and through it appeared in the general directory of Nizhny Novgorod sites[3]. Its standing was modest. In the capture of the "Machine Tools and Equipment" category from September 8, 2002, where entries were sorted by rating, model.nn.ru stood sixth out of seven sites with a value of 14 — while the top line of the category showed 106[3]. A year later, in the capture of the same category from September 17, 2003, the site's value was 16[4]. On how this source works and what counted as large numbers in it, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating and the general essay "Nizhny Novgorod Internet".

The site does not appear in the surviving table of voting results for the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day in 2004[5]. For a factory business-card site, that is expected: the contest and the counter measured traffic and audience sympathies, while a site like this existed not for an audience but so that a procurement clerk could find a phone number and know whom to call about a technical drawing.

How it closed

The site did not so much close as freeze. Two surviving captures of the home page — May 1, 2015 and May 5, 2016 — match word for word, down to the order of lines and the phone numbers[1][2]. Nothing on the page changed in a year.

The last Wayback Machine crawl of the address is dated February 22, 2020[6]. In our sample the domain is recorded as inactive, and no record survives of the enterprise moving to another address. Of NPP "Model"'s eighteen years online, what remains is a list of services, two phone numbers with the 831 area code, and a line in a directory category — exactly the minimum for which manufacturing firms set up websites in the early 2000s.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2015 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — "Machine Tools and Equipment" category of the nn.ru directory, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — "Machine Tools and Equipment" category of the nn.ru directory, 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, 2004 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Index of model.nn.ru captures in the web archive (archive)