The first public dial-up BBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess. This made the BBS possible for the first time, as it allowed software on the computer to pick up an incoming call, communicate with the user, and then hang up the call when the user logged off. A number of modems of this sort were available by the late 1970s. With the introduction of microcomputers with expansion slots, like the S-100 bus machines and Apple II, it became possible for the modem to communicate instructions and data on separate lines. Examples of direct-connecting modems did exist, and these often allowed the host computer to send it commands to answer or hang up calls, but these were very expensive devices used by large banks and similar companies. Disconnecting at the end of a call required the user to pick up the handset and return it to the phone. The user would first pick up the phone, dial a number, then press the handset into rubber cups on the top of the modem. One particularly influential example was PLATO, which had thousands of users by the late 1970s, many of whom used the messaging and chat room features of the system in the same way that would become common on BBSes.Įarly modems were generally very simple devices using acoustic couplers to handle telephone operation. Commercial systems, expressly intended to offer these features to the public, became available in the late 1970s and formed the online service market that lasted into the 1990s. Similar functionality was available to most mainframe users, which might be considered a sort of ultra-local BBS when used in this fashion. The system was expensive to operate, and when their host machine became unavailable and a new one could not be found, the system closed in January 1975. But users found ways to express themselves outside these bounds, and the system spontaneously created stories, poetry and other forms of communications. The system acted primarily in the form of a buy and sell system with the tags taking the place of the more traditional classifications. It did offer the ability to tag messages with keywords, which the user could use in searches. Community Memory therefore ran on a mainframe computer and was accessed through terminals located in several San Francisco Bay Area neighborhoods.The poor quality of the original modem connecting the terminals to the mainframe prompted Community Memory hardware person, Lee Felsenstein, to invent the Pennywhistle modem, whose design was highly influential in the mid-1970s.Ĭommunity Memory allowed the user to type messages into a computer terminal after inserting a coin, and offered a “pure” bulletin board experience with public messages only (no email or other features). Useful microcomputers did not exist at that time, and modems were both expensive and slow. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as uploading and downloading software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users through public message boards and sometimes via direct chatting BBSĪ precursor to the public bulletin board system was Community Memory, started in August 1973 in Berkeley, California. Is an acronym short for Bulletin Board System or sometimes called CBBS – Computer Bulletin Board Service s a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. First just very briefly of what it means before diving into its history and learn more about it.
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