At the end of 1994, Denis Roegel had gathered a subset of CTAN corresponding to some of the styles installed locally (that is, in the LORIA building). In this subset, there were many dvi files and he had the idea to create two or three web pages pointing to these files, for his personal use. This was also an opportunity to access in an easier way other TeX-related documents he had collected since 1992.
Then, at the beginning of 1995, Jean-Michel Antoine had the idea to expand these files and to make them public, at the same time as our new local guide. Jean-Michel choose the name ``(La)TeX Navigator'' and drew the logo.
Until the end of 1995, the French pages were maintained by Jean-Michel Antoine and they were the master pages. Karl Tombre maintained the English pages and Denis Roegel the German pages. Then Jean-Michel Antoine left CRIN and Karl Tombre took over the control of both the French and the English pages.
In June 1998, Karl Tombre was replaced by Nicolas Holzschuch for the maintenance of French and English pages.
In 2000, Denis Roegel took over the maintenance of the English pages and the French and German pages became unmaintained. (They might ressuscitate in the future.)
As time went by, we set as our objectives to gather documentation and various pointers about TeX and its environment. Through regular scanning of comp.text.tex and various mailing lists, the site has grown at a high rate and is now quite famous among (La)TeX lovers.
Currently, the site is maintained by Denis Roegel.