Thirty years of the internet: How the World Wide Web changed our lives thenational.scot - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thenational.scot Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
This Week In Illinois History: World’s First BBS Goes Live (Feb. 16, 1978)
The hardware built by Chicago’s Randy Suess in 1978 to operate the first computerized bulletin board system.
Credit Wikipedia user Jscott (CC BY-SA 3.0)
The Great Blizzard of 1978 was one of the worst storms in Illinois’ history. One-hundred-mile-an-hour winds whipped up snow drifts as high as 12 feet. Wind chills were so low they caused railroad tracks to buckle and break. Northern Illinois, especially Chicago, ground to a halt. And a couple of snowed-in computer nerds created a major technological achievement.
It was Feb. 16, 1978, just after the great blizzard, when two Chicagoans, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, launched the world’s first computerized bulletin board system (BBS).