John Allsopp, CSS Samurai and head of Western Civilisation Software, waxes nostalgic about the early days of CSS and the people who made it possible:
These guys, along with a few others, were also real driving forces in the style sheets newsgroup in the late 90s, when belief in css was, in hindsight and to be honest, probably a little optimistic at best. They and people like Alan J. Flavell, Liam Quinn, Braden N. McDaniel, Todd Fahrner, Daniel Glazman, David Baron posted tirelessly on the newsgroup, started sites like the Web Design Group's CSS reference and css.nu, formed the CSS Samurai at the Web Standards Project and basically created a community that continues to this day.
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But all you out there who read, write and care about CSS and web standards, stop for a moment and give some quiet thanks to these people, and all the many midwives who helped bring the possibility of web standards into the world.
You owe it to yourself to read John's piece if you care at all about Web standards.