Happy Anniversary Internet - Feb. 16, 1978: Bulletin Board Goes Electronic - launch of first public dialup bulletin board -
1978: Ward Christensen and Randy Suess launch the first public dialup bulletin board system. The two unleash the kernel of what would eventually spawn the world wide web, countless online messaging systems and, arguably, Twitter.
It was several decades before the hardware or the network caught up to Christensen and Suess’ imaginations, but all the basic seeds of today’s online communities were in place when the two launched the first bulletin board, dubbed CBBS for computerized bulletin board system. The two developers announced their creation to the world in the November 1978 issue of Byte magazine.
The article created a stir among hobbyists and hackers, and it wasn’t long before others begin building clones of CBBS. By the mid-1980s, BBSs supported an active community with no less than three magazines devoted to covering the latest in the proto-online world.
Reportedly conceived when Christensen was trapped in his Chicago home during the Great Blizzard of 1978, BBS took its basic premise from the community bulletin boards that once adorned the entrance of public places like libraries, schools and supermarkets.
The notion of digital meeting place in mind, Christensen and Suess set out to create the software and managed to go from idea to working bulletin board in just a month. In fact, some evidence suggests it actually took them even less time — a mere two weeks — and that Christensen and Suess extended the time frame to make the results sound more impressive.
Whatever the case, the results were definitely impressive. The original home-brewed internet, BBS was primitive but quickly proved revolutionary.
Sure, connecting to someone on BBS meant dialing into a phone line through your Trash-80 PC, typing a message in your monochromatic terminal and waiting days — sometimes even weeks — before you repeated the process to (hopefully) find a reply, but holy cow, look! You’ve got digital friends.
Unlike today’s web, BBS used traditional phone lines to log in to remote computers, meaning that if you wanted to dial in to a BBS out of your area, you’d be looking at long-distance charges from the phone company. Consequently, early BBSs were very locally oriented systems, but before too long the limitations gave birth to phone phreaking and other hacks.
Because of the complexity, limitations and slowness of BBS, the early system was largely populated by computer enthusiasts willing to shell out big bucks for the fastest modems. Given the audience, it’s hardly surprising that — like the early web that came after it — early BBSs often consisted of very technical postings, software downloads and primitive online games.
But you can also thank the BBS for some of the world’s first flame wars, as enthusiasts traded barbs battling over the superiority of Ataris to Amigas.
Eventually, the early world wide web supplanted the bulletin boards, but even today the humble BBS isn’t completely gone. In fact, BBSs thrive in Taiwan, where it’s an extremely popular form of communication for young people.
Projects like Jason Scott’s textfiles.com — which seeks to preserve and chronicle those early BBSs — many of the remnants of the BBSs themselves are still available as well. Also worth seeing for an even more in-depth look at the history of the BBS is Scott’s film, BBS: The Documentary.
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