On 5 Nov 2005 at 12:26, Gary VanderMolen wrote: > They were called Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's). Typically you'd dial directly > into one, connect at 300 baud, search the online files for something > interesting, and then download it. This was before the Internet and WWW.
I hate to be all pedantic... but...:o)... The first BBS system went online in 1979. Interestingly, Usenet struggled to life at almost the same time. On the Internet side, the networking there started in 1969 with several transitions [the transition to TCP/IP happening officially in 1982]. In 1986 NSF formed the [commercial] "regionals" -- which was the first time just-ordinary-folk could even get *close* to the network, and in 1987 UUnet sets up a fully government-free backbone, paralleling the NSFNET backbone, now, for the first time ever, allowing just-ordinary-folk (and businesses and anyone else who wanted to) to do *ANYTHING* on the Internet, free of any government control over who could connect or what they could do after they connected. In 1991, CERN released WWW to the world, but the real event that made the WWW become a "happening" was the release of Mosaic in 1993, and the first 'spam' appears in 1994 (and so "Canter & Siegel" will live in infamy..:o)] Depending on where you were at the time, you consider "the Internet" as either starting in 1969, 1982, 1987, or 1994..:o) /Bernie\ /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- -- ---------------------------------------- WIN-HOME Archives: http://PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM/archives/WIN-HOME.html Contact the List Owner about anything: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html
