December 20, 2010 • 32 mins
Before millions of people strolled around checking Facebook on their smartphones, bulletin-board systems connected computer users across the world. So what happened to these precursors of the Internet when the Web went mainstream? Tune in and find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
welcome to text stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and
(00:21):
I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting across from me, curiously as usual, is senior writer
Jonathan Strickland. Dust machine is niched for a finger, pokin
ont mitten grabbin, It's easy schnapping the spring work blow
and fuels in ont popping corkin Mitch spits and sparking.
(00:41):
Its niched for verkin by dust doom coffin, dust robin
nickensight zerin keeping hands in dust pockets, reluxant ont vatch
dust blinking lights. I love dust blinken lights. Shouldn't that
be de blinken lights. Well, I'm sorry that's the way
it was written. I know on what we are about
to talk about. UM, we have a little listener mail.
(01:07):
This listener mail comes from Patch, actually comes from several people,
but Patch wrote the first one. Hi, I found your
podcast a few days ago and really like it, and
I was wondering if you could do one on the
old b b s S. I'm building one myself. Thanks, Well, Patch,
we're going to talk about bbs is. And indeed, that
quote was not from a movie, It was not from
(01:28):
a song. That was a text file that was uploaded
to BBSs and made its way through various bbs is
in the in the eighties. Of course that was fake German.
It's not real German. Yeah, I remember frong leis And yeah, anyway,
(01:48):
I don't know what you would call it English, English, Deutsch,
in English, dout English, I don't know anyway. Um, Yeah,
And it's funny because the old bbs is, what ever
happened to those? They're still around, not all of them,
but yeah, Patch is apparently trying to build an old BBS,
but then would be a new BBS. Just confused, that's
(02:12):
a good question. It stands for bulletin board System and
it really is sort of the computer version of the
old bulletin boards that you would see in dormitories or
office buildings or even homes where people would just put
up a little note and for other people to see,
maybe they had something that they wanted to sell or
(02:32):
they were looking to buy, or just a cute joke
or something you just want to pop it up there
on the bulletin board. Same sort of thing, except in
this case it's all going to be located on a computer. Now,
the important thing to remember is this is taking place
that the era of the BBS is takes place before
the public era of the internet. Right, So, uh, taking
(02:55):
it down to bare bones, basically, what you've got is
a computer running a piece of software. They will allow
you to post and read messages. That's that's the simplest
form of what a BBS is. You have had one
more element. It allows you allows remote users to post
and read message. I was going to add that, I
(03:17):
mean without without the modem attached to it and a
phone line. Yeah, it would just it's essentially yeah, I
mean it's a bulletin board for one person, which is
kind of silly. But the BBS, Uh, yeah, you had
a computer that you could dial into so and and
the BBS is that I think of our sort of
(03:37):
if you will, hyperlocal. Yes, they didn't necessarily have to be,
but you know it would be you know, Bob's computer
over here. Remember Bob. We talked about Bob before. He's
very generous with the you know, allowing us to use this.
I've been told that I have to call him Robert. Now, yeah, okay,
So Robert has this computer and he's got a modem
and a phone line that you can use and h
(03:59):
Robert hosts messages about I don't know, role playing games
for example, and uh, well it's good because you have
your community that the people he wants to play with,
you know, and get together on Saturday night and spend
a couple of hours playing Dungeons and Dragons or uh,
ponds are blitz. That's not role playing game, but you know,
(04:20):
you could get people around the table to actually put Yeah,
that kind of thing. You have a group of people
who enthusiasts who want to play these games with you,
and you want to share tactics or messages about it
or body jokes. Right, dial up, We're not even there yet,
let's keep going anyway. So that's the thing he's got.
Roberts got this computer with a modem, and so uh,
(04:41):
Jeff and Steve want to hook up well on onto
the bulletin board, so they Jeff calls in the number
for the modem on Robert's computer, so he dials in
and he can see anything that Steve or Robert have
posted on their Jeff is reading messages. Uh wants to
comment on something. You post a comment on there and
(05:01):
hangs up the modem and then you know, whomever else
is in this group can dial up and see what's
on the bulletin board and post messages. However, Uh, generally speaking,
I would I think you probably agree with me. Generally speaking,
we're talking one person at a time, Yeah, especially the
early bbs is where they were limited to a single
user at a time. So yeah, again, this is a
(05:24):
precursor to the Internet, so you don't have any Internet
that you can log into. Uh, this was kind of
these these regional networks really, and not even a network,
because you're talking about just a one single machine that
you could dial into. So I guess you could call
it a network of two machines at any given time. Yeah,
because you have the one that is programmed to receive
(05:45):
the call. It's the host. Yeah, the host, which you know,
the client calls in and and and logs in with
the user name and password. Um, I'm assuming that you
would want to do that anyway, despite the fact that
as people aren't going to know how to do this,
you know how to do this let alone that. But
(06:06):
they're not gonna necessarily know where the BBS is and
what phone number to call to get there and have
the equipment to do it. But you still, you know,
have the client log into the host and check and
post most messages to it and in some cases files. Yeah.
Do you know when the very first Bolton board system
launched or who did it? I do? I don't. Okay,
(06:29):
So I asked you a question, and I drop a
bomb on you and you have no way of answering it.
That's an awesome co host, Jonathan Um, I'm thinking it
probably now that I've actually looked at my notes, would
be in Yes, that's correct. Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss
built the first Bolton Board system as the computerized bolletin
(06:49):
Board System. They created it out of Chicago. Well they
built they took down Chicago and built a bulletin board system. Well,
I mean, if you're gonna replace Chicago with some then anyway,
the Bolton Board System, well you know it's there, used
a smaller city to build a BBS anyway, Well they tried.
(07:10):
Never mind, I can't make jokes about that city anymore.
I was told not to. Uh. The so Chicago. Heck
of a town. Uh. The the these guys. What they
did was they built up the system. They designed a
program using assembly language actually eight assembly language. They designed
this program where it was it would allow people to
come in and post and read messages and that's essentially
(07:33):
all it could do when it first launched, and it
launched it was built in nineteen seventy eight, but it
launched in publicly in nineteen seventy nine, and um, well
there was. They did announce what they had done in
the UH and BITE magazine in November. Um so they
you know, Bite was. If you're not familiar with Bite,
(07:54):
how would you describe by I would say it's a
computer enthusiast magazine, but it was really um for serious
computer enthusiast. These are people who are interested in programming
and hacking in the classical I think these are the
same people who would order computer building kits that they
would build their own personal computers. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't
(08:14):
mean interruption. Go ahead, but it's not like, for example,
a PC world would be where you're reading about software
and things. These are people who would want to make
their own software and build their own It was it
was written by and four hackers. That's what you can say.
And we're talking about hackers in the sense of people
who programmed, not necessarily people who are trying to break
into security systems or create malware. UM. That's a that
(08:37):
was something that hacker came to be known for UM
later on. But originally hackers were programmers. There are guys
who were trying to end women, trying to figure out
how to make a computer program do a certain task.
And UM, they often weren't really worried about how pretty
it looked at the end of the day. So the
(08:58):
c b b S, which was the the Computer bulletin
Board System, UM, it launches it and and people users
think it's really cool, but it's it's in Chicago. It's
using you have to dial in, right, so unless you're
local to Chicago, it's a long distance call, so you
can't you know, you can't just call in and not
and not worry about charges. Uh. And it wasn't distributed.
(09:21):
It was just that, you know, they talked about how
they did it, and some people read it and thought, hey,
this is a great idea, and they attempted their own version.
And among those was a guy named Bill Blue. He
wrote a b B S really which one I don't know.
He wrote a b B S ABS and it was
(09:44):
it was kind of followed. It followed along with the
c BBS system. But he built it so that anyone
who had an Apple too, and anyone who had the
d C. Hayes m M modem very specif think, could
could run the the program. So the CBBS one was
(10:08):
particular to Chicago, but Bills was one that if you
got that code and you had an Apple computer and
you had this modem, you could run this and create
your own Bolton board system. And so people started to
do that. And uh, back in the day, you know
what the fastest or what was considered a fast modem
back then, right, Yeah, three D bad. If you don't
(10:30):
know what bad is, that means that it could transmit
three hundred symbols in a second. That's not fast people,
It's yeah, it's you can't and you can't easily translate
BAWD to bits per second. It it's not it's not
it's not analogous exactly. It's not analogous. But by the
by the time of the well actually that I guess
(10:52):
technically literally, the standard is still the same the fastest.
About the fastest you can go on a phone line
in the United States is uh yeah, is it fifty two? Yeah,
because it was supposed to be fifty six, But there
is a legal limitation. I was about to say technical specification,
(11:13):
but it's not the actual speed. But yeah, when I
started using a dial up modems the standard and then
shortly after that, uh, back back when they stopped being
as common, probably in the late nineties early two thousand's,
modems hit a practical limitation that there's a limit to
the amount of bandwidth you can send over phone line
(11:36):
because it's using audio to do this rather than the
bandwidth on the other side of the audio space in
a phone line. So um, yeah, due to practical limitations.
But yeah, three bod that can you imagine trying to
transfer something like a YouTube video or a flash animation
at three You might not want to have anything scheduled
(11:59):
for the next year. It would take you a very
long time the and and that kind of brings us
to one of the reasons one of the limitations, or
if you will, one of the features of bbs is
they were text based. Yes, they had usually some sort
of file structure system that you can navigate so that
you could read things that are similar to today's message
(12:20):
boards on internet UH sites, websites, UM. So you had
the message boards where you could converse with other people
who would visit this BBS again, not in real time,
but for the most part, because usually at least for
the smaller bbs is, you're the only one on that system.
You might be on at the same time as the
system operator that's the owner uh systems. That's where sissop
(12:44):
comes from. If you've heard that term. It comes from
the old BBS days. Actually, a lot of the acronyms
and that we see online they have their origin back
in the old bbs is. So yeah, you you normally
would be having asynchronous conversations, right you would post something,
you would log off the BBS. You might check the
(13:07):
next day and see that someone's replied to you. It
wouldn't be this instant message uh that that we've become
used to on the internet. And now. Some bbs is
did eventually get to the point where they had multiple
phone lines. So if you would called one and got
a busy signal, you could call the next phone line
for the same BBS and connect to it and they
could actually have multiple users online at the same time,
but that that was not the case for your average
(13:29):
BBS because you know, if it was just some guy
running it out of his um, you know, his his den,
it may be that there's just one phone line that
he could even dedicate to it. And of course, if
if he's not there at the time, there's always the
chance that the BBS would crash. You would call, you
couldn't connect, and you know, you you'd be stuck without
that BBS until he came back home and fixed it
(13:50):
or she. I shouldn't just say he. I mean I
always say he because I think that's probably the majority
of the users, but it wasn't total all male. Uh.
And on these bbs is you could find things besides
the message boards. You could find other things like you
you mentioned files. That was That was a little later,
but not by much. We talked about shareware and how
(14:12):
that that model developed and how games used to spread
that way. Um. But yeah, I think that's true. I mean,
we're talking about again, we're talking about physical limitations, and
in the nineteen eighties we're not talking about you know,
gigabyte hard drives or terabyte hard drives. Hard drives. Yeah,
if there were hard drives at all. Um, so we're
(14:35):
not talking about anything too particularly large. But people did, um,
you know, share information and pirate software, pirate software uh
to to a lesser extent. I think that probably, I
think you're right. I think that was probably more along
the lines of when these systems became more sophisticated. But
you know the things that you do on for example,
(14:58):
use net groups or I r C now or even
back in the earlier days of public uh Internet, Um,
you know you didn't. You couldn't really do that because
you just didn't have the hardware to make that happen.
It was on a much smaller scale now. They didn't
have games. Um, there are a lot of games that
you could play on a BBS Many of them had
(15:21):
specific limitations on how long you could play, because you
don't want to have one user dominate that phone line,
right right, So most of the time these bbs is
would have a as a timer, and once you exceeded
the limit on that timer, you would get disconnected and
someone else could call in sorry go ahead. Um No.
(15:44):
There were also turn based games, if I'm not mistaken, um,
where you could you know, log in, play your turn,
and log back out and wait for somebody else to
the I mean chess was very popular on bbs is.
But one of the games that is incredibly popular in
bbs is And yes I did play this game, Legend
(16:05):
of the Red Dragon, which was often known as just
Lord l O R d UM. It was created by
Seth Robinson and it was It was a game where
you created a character that um developed skills and prowess,
and the goal was to defeat the Red Dragon that
(16:26):
is terrorizing this one town. And the way the game
worked was it would work in cycles. The game would
start and everybody would be on equal ground, and all
the people who are playing the game have the same goal.
They want to be the one to defeat the dragon.
When a player got to the point where he or
she could defeat the dragon and the dragons defeated, new game,
(16:47):
I see and everyone starts again at the bottom. Uh.
It had other features in it where you could challenge
other players to fight, but they were um they were
usually it was automated, so when you weren't online and
someone else was playing, they could challenge your character to
a duel and the computer would run your character as
if you know you were doing it. Uh. You could
(17:07):
also flirt with other characters, and there were consequences to flirting,
including things like you might be greeted with a child
within the game. I won't go into any more detail
on that. Yeah, So anyway, it was actually kind of interesting.
I had a little bit of a complex social structure
(17:28):
to it. Um And some of the other games were
really cool too, like the Trade Wars twenty twenty two
or two thousand two. That was a good one. Barren
Realms Elite was amazing, really. Yeah. Barren Realms Elite was
a multiplayer strategy game and if you could have twenty
five people playing this game, and the way the game
(17:49):
worked was that would pitt bbs is against each other.
Each BBS would essentially be a planet in a in
a galaxy of planets, and so you were trying to
have your planet come out on top of all the
other planets. So it was this neat competition between BBS
is UM And I'm sorry, go ahead, I was gonna
(18:12):
say just that that that was kind of interesting because
you could you know, BBS is not like the Internet.
You know, you log into the Internet. The Internet is
one gigantic network you could visit as many bbs is
as you liked. Uh, we were really only limited by
your phone bill and the amount of time you had
at your disposal. Because each bbs was its own distinct
(18:35):
thing with its own community, and some of the communities
had multiple liked, some of the communities overlapped, right, and
you would find the same people going to maybe three
or four of the bbs is in their local area,
but some of them would be more niche oriented, and
you would really just see a certain group of people
just stay there, like especially the ones that were centered
around a very specific topic like dungeons and dragons, right,
(18:59):
and yeah, there are a lot of the bbs is
that I was familiar with had a specific slant to them,
like they were specifically geared toward a particular interest. Um.
I know, I know there were plenty of general topic
bbs is, but it's you know, the ones that I
was familiar with. Now, I didn't I admit I never
(19:21):
actually dialed into a bbs I was, um just I
didn't really become aware of it until after I had
already started using the Internet or actually bitten net technically. Um,
And you know, I was vaguely aware of it, but
I didn't have a modem, so I didn't really participate
for about five or six that I used to lug
into pretty regularly. But um, yeah, I mean and in
(19:42):
a lot of cases, I think this is this is
sort of what evolved into the online service provider was,
you know, the the gradual interest in people of logging
into these systems and they became more complex. Uh, we
had lots more people than you have companies looking to
uh develop something more robust like a CompuServe or in
(20:05):
America online before you know, the Internet became more of
a public sphere when it was still dominated by government
and academic interests, and you also had at this point
the technology for modems has evolved as well, so that
you could include things like some graphics in your in
your system, like as we said before with BBS, as
(20:27):
it was mostly text based or symbol based stuff because
the well, for multiple reasons, One you have limited amount
space on the computer that's hosting the BBS, but for another,
it's just the limitation of how fast your modem can
can conduct data through it. And at that speed you
just couldn't do graphics. Um, that didn't stop people from
(20:51):
creating as key art. They started doing that. They would
use as key symbols to create uh uh sketches. Really
I love as art. Well is interesting is they kind
of became a currency on bbs is. People would build
a design and they could trade it for other designs
or sometimes for other programs things like that. It was
(21:11):
kind of interesting that that became currency on BBSs or
magic beans or magic beans. I wanted to read a
little bit or or refer a little bit to an
interesting document I found at text files dot com, which
is a it's an archive of BBS text files. This
is a text file called what has Killed BBS Systems.
(21:33):
What I find interesting about this is that it was
written in nineteen eighty two eight two What has Killed
BBS Systems? That, keeping in mind the first public bbs
is nineteen seventy nine. Yes, it did not take long
to kill the bbs is according to this guy, Well, yes,
but I I have a theory on this, but go
(21:53):
ahead and make here. So the points that he made
was that he said that the uploading and downloading program
was killing bbs is because people would just come in,
get whatever they wanted, and go, and they wouldn't they
wouldn't participate in the community. Um. They said that there
was a retaliation that was getting very cliquish, and people
were retaliating against folks who were there just to communicate
(22:16):
and to make friends and to exchange information. UH. He
also blamed the proliferation of bbs is in a single area,
in any given area. That was one of the things
I talked about. How you could be on several bbs is,
you know, you would go from one to the other.
He he was saying that that's a problem. Um. He
says that in places where there were only a couple
(22:38):
of bbs is, things were going great. UM. He said
that the loss of anonymity was a big problem, which
is interesting because that's something that you hear on internet
forums where people are reluctant to tie their own name
to an online handle. You know that there's a lot
of that still going on today. UM. The anti hacker movement,
(23:01):
he said, was a big problem, which was the whole
idea of UH. The hacker in the sense of programmer,
not in the sense of phone freaker or or malicious hacker.
He says that that whole uh turning the word hacker
into something bad was part of what was killing BBS is. Uh,
they said that the press is ignorance of the BBS
(23:22):
community was a problem. Sissop ignorance, which he said that
because it became so easy to host a BBS, people
who had no business hosting them were doing so, and
that was killing the BBS is. You could argue the
same thing for web pages today. I would assume like
web administrators would probably say the same sort of thing.
People who run really good websites might really complain about
(23:44):
folks who don't run such great websites. Um. So, yeah,
it's just interesting to see that these complaints came out
as early as a D two and and his his
text file is much longer than what I've indicated. But um,
bbs is of course kept on going throughout the eighties
and into the nineties, and as we've said, they're still
out there today. It's just there're no what we're near
(24:05):
as prevalent as they used to be right now. Uh. True,
BBS is not on the Internet. It's not you know
there there are there are approximations. I mean, you can
think about this that the Internet is basically a gigantic
form of this. But because they're all kinds of message
boards that you can post too, in places to upload
(24:27):
and download files from and and online communities. But uh,
you know, a BBS itself is a very limited uh world,
if you will, if you'll accept that as a term there,
and um, yeah, I think that for for the poster
of that post, Um, it's obviously something. It was obviously
something very special. He liked that community, uh, and that
(24:50):
particular environment. And the more people it's like you you
have your uh, your band, your favorite indie band, and
then they finally get you complain that nobody ever likes
them in everyone likes and they totally sold out exactly.
Super Chunk was on NPR. What is up with that? Dude?
I saw super Chunk in nineteen nine. Okay, I'm getting
(25:10):
a little ahead of it. Yeah, I'm getting off topic anyhow,
But yeah, it's it was. It was that kind of
loyalty and interest in the BBS world that I think
inspired that, and I mean causes a lot of people
now to think back on it, uh favorably. In fact, Um,
you know, Jason Scott, did you see this the BBS
(25:31):
documentary called the documentary? I saw that it was, Um,
I saw the website for it. Of course, don't have
access to the documentary, so I didn't get to watch it. Yeah,
they they, I think, get into much more granular detail
on bbs IS and and the whole culture. Eight different episodes, right, Yeah,
it's on several so you know, I'm sure it would
(25:54):
be fascinating. I just didn't have time to check it
out before. But but yeah, I mean, so there's there's
a lot to it, but those are those are the basics. Yeah,
and and some of the people who are really doing
important work in technology today, we're big into bbs IS
back in the eighties. So for example, well, I mean
there's the laws. Yes, Wozniak he uh, Steve Wozniac he
(26:18):
one of the founders of Apple. He was a big
proponent of bbs IS back in the day. And of
course he even used it to help people figure out
how to phone freak. He may remember our phone freaking
episode from several months back. But also there was a
guy who wrote a document on bbs as that got
spread around quite a bit. The document called the Bill
(26:41):
of Rights Light l i t E. Which was a
rephrased bill of rights that were It was designed to
kind of point out the issues that were surrounding um computer,
uh technology and how that relates to constitutional it's and
how it's a complicated issue, kind of really looking ahead
(27:03):
to see how the digital age is conflicting with basic
rights and and like how does it fit and where
does it not fit and where do we need to
tweak it so that it works properly. Was written by
a guy named John Perry Barlow. UH. Barlow is one
of the founders of the Electronic Freedom Foundation the e F. Yes,
(27:26):
so the e F continues today to try and and
shape public policy so that internet freedoms, things like net
neutrality remain untouched. They advocate for uh for net neutrality,
among other policies. So, uh, some people who are really
(27:47):
you know, movers and shakers in the technology world, we're
big into bbs IS back in the day. Yeah, that's uh,
that's definitely true, and um, you know, and and other
people knew it too as well, because the government of
the federal government in the United States had its I
on bbs IS And we're watching to see who was
on the different uh bulletin boards. I know that Steve
(28:11):
Jackson Games, which is an office favorite among uh some
gamers here at how stuffworks dot com. Their offices were
rated because they were hosting a bbs and the Secret
Service thought there was some illicit material on there about
hacking in computer networks. As it turns out there wasn't. Yeah,
but but BBSs did. Yeah, BBSs did provide some people
(28:35):
the ability to to either share tips on how to
pirate software or actually would include pirated software as a download. Um,
there were hackers specific bbs is. Uh. In fact, a
lot of the early ones were hackers specific. We're not
just not just hackers as in programmers, but hackers asn't
(28:55):
the people who enjoy breaking into systems, learning how they
work than exploiting them. So yeah about them, Yeah I
should Hey wait a minute, anyway, Yeah, there there were
there were some kind of shady bbs is out there,
and even some of the general purpose bbs has had
some material on it that probably wasn't appropriate for all eyes.
(29:18):
I can actually, I won't say maybe definitely. I was
a kid and I was on those bbs is, and
I know that there was material A lot of them
actually had. UM, had ways of of making you talk. No,
they had ways to to guard against that. You had
to use a like a credit card to um access
certain parts of the BBS. And it wasn't necessarily that
(29:41):
they would charge you, but they wanted the credit card
to to prove that you're an adult. Right, if you're
old enough to have a credit card, then you're old
enough to get access to this material. And uh, you know,
some of them followed that and some didn't. And yes,
you can build your own BBS even to this day.
You can either use a dial up modem and have
people call in physically to that machine and explore your BBS,
(30:03):
or you can use a tell net client and have
people tell net into it. Um. But the you know,
the era of the BBS is is. I mean, there's
still a few out there that are still that still
have their die hard fans who who contribute and are
big into that community, but the Internet is really um
appropriated a lot of that. Yeah. It's kind of ironic
(30:26):
too in a way that as popular as electronic communication
is now, the BBS surged in popularity and has now
receded to the point where people like the one you
quoted a few minutes ago are probably happy again because
just the you know, they're still back to the original
little communities of people little pockets of people. Yeah maybe,
(30:47):
um yeah, because I I often will think of a
BBS as if you it's sort of similar to what
would happen if you grabbed a web server and then
you severed its connection to the rest of the Internet,
so you could connect directly to the at web server,
but you could not connect to any other web page,
like you couldn't go outside the boundaries of that server,
say somewhere kind of things. And again we're talking about
(31:09):
you know, text based stuff, right and and interesting askey art. Okay,
well that wraps up this discussion on bulletin board Systems
b b S. I hope you enjoyed it this little
walk down Internet memory lane or network memory lane, body
memory lane. To bring back that joke. If you have
(31:31):
any topics you would specifically like us to cover, you
can let us know on Facebook or Twitter are handle
there is tech stuff HS double you or you can
shoot us an email. That address is tech stuff at
how stuff Works dot com and Chris and I will
talk to you again really soon for more on this
(31:51):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com. So learn more about the podcast click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
The House Shtufforks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today
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twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
text style from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
welcome to text stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, and
(00:21):
I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting across from me, curiously as usual, is senior writer
Jonathan Strickland. Dust machine is niched for a finger, pokin
ont mitten grabbin, It's easy schnapping the spring work blow
and fuels in ont popping corkin Mitch spits and sparking.
(00:41):
Its niched for verkin by dust doom coffin, dust robin
nickensight zerin keeping hands in dust pockets, reluxant ont vatch
dust blinking lights. I love dust blinken lights. Shouldn't that
be de blinken lights. Well, I'm sorry that's the way
it was written. I know on what we are about
to talk about. UM, we have a little listener mail.
(01:07):
This listener mail comes from Patch, actually comes from several people,
but Patch wrote the first one. Hi, I found your
podcast a few days ago and really like it, and
I was wondering if you could do one on the
old b b s S. I'm building one myself. Thanks, Well, Patch,
we're going to talk about bbs is. And indeed, that
quote was not from a movie, It was not from
(01:28):
a song. That was a text file that was uploaded
to BBSs and made its way through various bbs is
in the in the eighties. Of course that was fake German.
It's not real German. Yeah, I remember frong leis And yeah, anyway,
(01:48):
I don't know what you would call it English, English, Deutsch,
in English, dout English, I don't know anyway. Um, Yeah,
And it's funny because the old bbs is, what ever
happened to those? They're still around, not all of them,
but yeah, Patch is apparently trying to build an old BBS,
but then would be a new BBS. Just confused, that's
(02:12):
a good question. It stands for bulletin board System and
it really is sort of the computer version of the
old bulletin boards that you would see in dormitories or
office buildings or even homes where people would just put
up a little note and for other people to see,
maybe they had something that they wanted to sell or
(02:32):
they were looking to buy, or just a cute joke
or something you just want to pop it up there
on the bulletin board. Same sort of thing, except in
this case it's all going to be located on a computer. Now,
the important thing to remember is this is taking place
that the era of the BBS is takes place before
the public era of the internet. Right, So, uh, taking
(02:55):
it down to bare bones, basically, what you've got is
a computer running a piece of software. They will allow
you to post and read messages. That's that's the simplest
form of what a BBS is. You have had one
more element. It allows you allows remote users to post
and read message. I was going to add that, I
(03:17):
mean without without the modem attached to it and a
phone line. Yeah, it would just it's essentially yeah, I
mean it's a bulletin board for one person, which is
kind of silly. But the BBS, Uh, yeah, you had
a computer that you could dial into so and and
the BBS is that I think of our sort of
(03:37):
if you will, hyperlocal. Yes, they didn't necessarily have to be,
but you know it would be you know, Bob's computer
over here. Remember Bob. We talked about Bob before. He's
very generous with the you know, allowing us to use this.
I've been told that I have to call him Robert. Now, yeah, okay,
So Robert has this computer and he's got a modem
and a phone line that you can use and h
(03:59):
Robert hosts messages about I don't know, role playing games
for example, and uh, well it's good because you have
your community that the people he wants to play with,
you know, and get together on Saturday night and spend
a couple of hours playing Dungeons and Dragons or uh,
ponds are blitz. That's not role playing game, but you know,
(04:20):
you could get people around the table to actually put Yeah,
that kind of thing. You have a group of people
who enthusiasts who want to play these games with you,
and you want to share tactics or messages about it
or body jokes. Right, dial up, We're not even there yet,
let's keep going anyway. So that's the thing he's got.
Roberts got this computer with a modem, and so uh,
(04:41):
Jeff and Steve want to hook up well on onto
the bulletin board, so they Jeff calls in the number
for the modem on Robert's computer, so he dials in
and he can see anything that Steve or Robert have
posted on their Jeff is reading messages. Uh wants to
comment on something. You post a comment on there and
(05:01):
hangs up the modem and then you know, whomever else
is in this group can dial up and see what's
on the bulletin board and post messages. However, Uh, generally speaking,
I would I think you probably agree with me. Generally speaking,
we're talking one person at a time, Yeah, especially the
early bbs is where they were limited to a single
user at a time. So yeah, again, this is a
(05:24):
precursor to the Internet, so you don't have any Internet
that you can log into. Uh, this was kind of
these these regional networks really, and not even a network,
because you're talking about just a one single machine that
you could dial into. So I guess you could call
it a network of two machines at any given time. Yeah,
because you have the one that is programmed to receive
(05:45):
the call. It's the host. Yeah, the host, which you know,
the client calls in and and and logs in with
the user name and password. Um, I'm assuming that you
would want to do that anyway, despite the fact that
as people aren't going to know how to do this,
you know how to do this let alone that. But
(06:06):
they're not gonna necessarily know where the BBS is and
what phone number to call to get there and have
the equipment to do it. But you still, you know,
have the client log into the host and check and
post most messages to it and in some cases files. Yeah.
Do you know when the very first Bolton board system
launched or who did it? I do? I don't. Okay,
(06:29):
So I asked you a question, and I drop a
bomb on you and you have no way of answering it.
That's an awesome co host, Jonathan Um, I'm thinking it
probably now that I've actually looked at my notes, would
be in Yes, that's correct. Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss
built the first Bolton Board system as the computerized bolletin
(06:49):
Board System. They created it out of Chicago. Well they
built they took down Chicago and built a bulletin board system. Well,
I mean, if you're gonna replace Chicago with some then anyway,
the Bolton Board System, well you know it's there, used
a smaller city to build a BBS anyway, Well they tried.
(07:10):
Never mind, I can't make jokes about that city anymore.
I was told not to. Uh. The so Chicago. Heck
of a town. Uh. The the these guys. What they
did was they built up the system. They designed a
program using assembly language actually eight assembly language. They designed
this program where it was it would allow people to
come in and post and read messages and that's essentially
(07:33):
all it could do when it first launched, and it
launched it was built in nineteen seventy eight, but it
launched in publicly in nineteen seventy nine, and um, well
there was. They did announce what they had done in
the UH and BITE magazine in November. Um so they
you know, Bite was. If you're not familiar with Bite,
(07:54):
how would you describe by I would say it's a
computer enthusiast magazine, but it was really um for serious
computer enthusiast. These are people who are interested in programming
and hacking in the classical I think these are the
same people who would order computer building kits that they
would build their own personal computers. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't
(08:14):
mean interruption. Go ahead, but it's not like, for example,
a PC world would be where you're reading about software
and things. These are people who would want to make
their own software and build their own It was it
was written by and four hackers. That's what you can say.
And we're talking about hackers in the sense of people
who programmed, not necessarily people who are trying to break
into security systems or create malware. UM. That's a that
(08:37):
was something that hacker came to be known for UM
later on. But originally hackers were programmers. There are guys
who were trying to end women, trying to figure out
how to make a computer program do a certain task.
And UM, they often weren't really worried about how pretty
it looked at the end of the day. So the
(08:58):
c b b S, which was the the Computer bulletin
Board System, UM, it launches it and and people users
think it's really cool, but it's it's in Chicago. It's
using you have to dial in, right, so unless you're
local to Chicago, it's a long distance call, so you
can't you know, you can't just call in and not
and not worry about charges. Uh. And it wasn't distributed.
(09:21):
It was just that, you know, they talked about how
they did it, and some people read it and thought, hey,
this is a great idea, and they attempted their own version.
And among those was a guy named Bill Blue. He
wrote a b B S really which one I don't know.
He wrote a b B S ABS and it was
(09:44):
it was kind of followed. It followed along with the
c BBS system. But he built it so that anyone
who had an Apple too, and anyone who had the
d C. Hayes m M modem very specif think, could
could run the the program. So the CBBS one was
(10:08):
particular to Chicago, but Bills was one that if you
got that code and you had an Apple computer and
you had this modem, you could run this and create
your own Bolton board system. And so people started to
do that. And uh, back in the day, you know
what the fastest or what was considered a fast modem
back then, right, Yeah, three D bad. If you don't
(10:30):
know what bad is, that means that it could transmit
three hundred symbols in a second. That's not fast people,
It's yeah, it's you can't and you can't easily translate
BAWD to bits per second. It it's not it's not
it's not analogous exactly. It's not analogous. But by the
by the time of the well actually that I guess
(10:52):
technically literally, the standard is still the same the fastest.
About the fastest you can go on a phone line
in the United States is uh yeah, is it fifty two? Yeah,
because it was supposed to be fifty six, But there
is a legal limitation. I was about to say technical specification,
(11:13):
but it's not the actual speed. But yeah, when I
started using a dial up modems the standard and then
shortly after that, uh, back back when they stopped being
as common, probably in the late nineties early two thousand's,
modems hit a practical limitation that there's a limit to
the amount of bandwidth you can send over phone line
(11:36):
because it's using audio to do this rather than the
bandwidth on the other side of the audio space in
a phone line. So um, yeah, due to practical limitations.
But yeah, three bod that can you imagine trying to
transfer something like a YouTube video or a flash animation
at three You might not want to have anything scheduled
(11:59):
for the next year. It would take you a very
long time the and and that kind of brings us
to one of the reasons one of the limitations, or
if you will, one of the features of bbs is
they were text based. Yes, they had usually some sort
of file structure system that you can navigate so that
you could read things that are similar to today's message
(12:20):
boards on internet UH sites, websites, UM. So you had
the message boards where you could converse with other people
who would visit this BBS again, not in real time,
but for the most part, because usually at least for
the smaller bbs is, you're the only one on that system.
You might be on at the same time as the
system operator that's the owner uh systems. That's where sissop
(12:44):
comes from. If you've heard that term. It comes from
the old BBS days. Actually, a lot of the acronyms
and that we see online they have their origin back
in the old bbs is. So yeah, you you normally
would be having asynchronous conversations, right you would post something,
you would log off the BBS. You might check the
(13:07):
next day and see that someone's replied to you. It
wouldn't be this instant message uh that that we've become
used to on the internet. And now. Some bbs is
did eventually get to the point where they had multiple
phone lines. So if you would called one and got
a busy signal, you could call the next phone line
for the same BBS and connect to it and they
could actually have multiple users online at the same time,
but that that was not the case for your average
(13:29):
BBS because you know, if it was just some guy
running it out of his um, you know, his his den,
it may be that there's just one phone line that
he could even dedicate to it. And of course, if
if he's not there at the time, there's always the
chance that the BBS would crash. You would call, you
couldn't connect, and you know, you you'd be stuck without
that BBS until he came back home and fixed it
(13:50):
or she. I shouldn't just say he. I mean I
always say he because I think that's probably the majority
of the users, but it wasn't total all male. Uh.
And on these bbs is you could find things besides
the message boards. You could find other things like you
you mentioned files. That was That was a little later,
but not by much. We talked about shareware and how
(14:12):
that that model developed and how games used to spread
that way. Um. But yeah, I think that's true. I mean,
we're talking about again, we're talking about physical limitations, and
in the nineteen eighties we're not talking about you know,
gigabyte hard drives or terabyte hard drives. Hard drives. Yeah,
if there were hard drives at all. Um, so we're
(14:35):
not talking about anything too particularly large. But people did, um,
you know, share information and pirate software, pirate software uh
to to a lesser extent. I think that probably, I
think you're right. I think that was probably more along
the lines of when these systems became more sophisticated. But
you know the things that you do on for example,
(14:58):
use net groups or I r C now or even
back in the earlier days of public uh Internet, Um,
you know you didn't. You couldn't really do that because
you just didn't have the hardware to make that happen.
It was on a much smaller scale now. They didn't
have games. Um, there are a lot of games that
you could play on a BBS Many of them had
(15:21):
specific limitations on how long you could play, because you
don't want to have one user dominate that phone line,
right right, So most of the time these bbs is
would have a as a timer, and once you exceeded
the limit on that timer, you would get disconnected and
someone else could call in sorry go ahead. Um No.
(15:44):
There were also turn based games, if I'm not mistaken, um,
where you could you know, log in, play your turn,
and log back out and wait for somebody else to
the I mean chess was very popular on bbs is.
But one of the games that is incredibly popular in
bbs is And yes I did play this game, Legend
(16:05):
of the Red Dragon, which was often known as just
Lord l O R d UM. It was created by
Seth Robinson and it was It was a game where
you created a character that um developed skills and prowess,
and the goal was to defeat the Red Dragon that
(16:26):
is terrorizing this one town. And the way the game
worked was it would work in cycles. The game would
start and everybody would be on equal ground, and all
the people who are playing the game have the same goal.
They want to be the one to defeat the dragon.
When a player got to the point where he or
she could defeat the dragon and the dragons defeated, new game,
(16:47):
I see and everyone starts again at the bottom. Uh.
It had other features in it where you could challenge
other players to fight, but they were um they were
usually it was automated, so when you weren't online and
someone else was playing, they could challenge your character to
a duel and the computer would run your character as
if you know you were doing it. Uh. You could
(17:07):
also flirt with other characters, and there were consequences to flirting,
including things like you might be greeted with a child
within the game. I won't go into any more detail
on that. Yeah, So anyway, it was actually kind of interesting.
I had a little bit of a complex social structure
(17:28):
to it. Um And some of the other games were
really cool too, like the Trade Wars twenty twenty two
or two thousand two. That was a good one. Barren
Realms Elite was amazing, really. Yeah. Barren Realms Elite was
a multiplayer strategy game and if you could have twenty
five people playing this game, and the way the game
(17:49):
worked was that would pitt bbs is against each other.
Each BBS would essentially be a planet in a in
a galaxy of planets, and so you were trying to
have your planet come out on top of all the
other planets. So it was this neat competition between BBS
is UM And I'm sorry, go ahead, I was gonna
(18:12):
say just that that that was kind of interesting because
you could you know, BBS is not like the Internet.
You know, you log into the Internet. The Internet is
one gigantic network you could visit as many bbs is
as you liked. Uh, we were really only limited by
your phone bill and the amount of time you had
at your disposal. Because each bbs was its own distinct
(18:35):
thing with its own community, and some of the communities
had multiple liked, some of the communities overlapped, right, and
you would find the same people going to maybe three
or four of the bbs is in their local area,
but some of them would be more niche oriented, and
you would really just see a certain group of people
just stay there, like especially the ones that were centered
around a very specific topic like dungeons and dragons, right,
(18:59):
and yeah, there are a lot of the bbs is
that I was familiar with had a specific slant to them,
like they were specifically geared toward a particular interest. Um.
I know, I know there were plenty of general topic
bbs is, but it's you know, the ones that I
was familiar with. Now, I didn't I admit I never
(19:21):
actually dialed into a bbs I was, um just I
didn't really become aware of it until after I had
already started using the Internet or actually bitten net technically. Um,
And you know, I was vaguely aware of it, but
I didn't have a modem, so I didn't really participate
for about five or six that I used to lug
into pretty regularly. But um, yeah, I mean and in
(19:42):
a lot of cases, I think this is this is
sort of what evolved into the online service provider was,
you know, the the gradual interest in people of logging
into these systems and they became more complex. Uh, we
had lots more people than you have companies looking to
uh develop something more robust like a CompuServe or in
(20:05):
America online before you know, the Internet became more of
a public sphere when it was still dominated by government
and academic interests, and you also had at this point
the technology for modems has evolved as well, so that
you could include things like some graphics in your in
your system, like as we said before with BBS, as
(20:27):
it was mostly text based or symbol based stuff because
the well, for multiple reasons, One you have limited amount
space on the computer that's hosting the BBS, but for another,
it's just the limitation of how fast your modem can
can conduct data through it. And at that speed you
just couldn't do graphics. Um, that didn't stop people from
(20:51):
creating as key art. They started doing that. They would
use as key symbols to create uh uh sketches. Really
I love as art. Well is interesting is they kind
of became a currency on bbs is. People would build
a design and they could trade it for other designs
or sometimes for other programs things like that. It was
(21:11):
kind of interesting that that became currency on BBSs or
magic beans or magic beans. I wanted to read a
little bit or or refer a little bit to an
interesting document I found at text files dot com, which
is a it's an archive of BBS text files. This
is a text file called what has Killed BBS Systems.
(21:33):
What I find interesting about this is that it was
written in nineteen eighty two eight two What has Killed
BBS Systems? That, keeping in mind the first public bbs
is nineteen seventy nine. Yes, it did not take long
to kill the bbs is according to this guy, Well, yes,
but I I have a theory on this, but go
(21:53):
ahead and make here. So the points that he made
was that he said that the uploading and downloading program
was killing bbs is because people would just come in,
get whatever they wanted, and go, and they wouldn't they
wouldn't participate in the community. Um. They said that there
was a retaliation that was getting very cliquish, and people
were retaliating against folks who were there just to communicate
(22:16):
and to make friends and to exchange information. UH. He
also blamed the proliferation of bbs is in a single area,
in any given area. That was one of the things
I talked about. How you could be on several bbs is,
you know, you would go from one to the other.
He he was saying that that's a problem. Um. He
says that in places where there were only a couple
(22:38):
of bbs is, things were going great. UM. He said
that the loss of anonymity was a big problem, which
is interesting because that's something that you hear on internet
forums where people are reluctant to tie their own name
to an online handle. You know that there's a lot
of that still going on today. UM. The anti hacker movement,
(23:01):
he said, was a big problem, which was the whole
idea of UH. The hacker in the sense of programmer,
not in the sense of phone freaker or or malicious hacker.
He says that that whole uh turning the word hacker
into something bad was part of what was killing BBS is. Uh,
they said that the press is ignorance of the BBS
(23:22):
community was a problem. Sissop ignorance, which he said that
because it became so easy to host a BBS, people
who had no business hosting them were doing so, and
that was killing the BBS is. You could argue the
same thing for web pages today. I would assume like
web administrators would probably say the same sort of thing.
People who run really good websites might really complain about
(23:44):
folks who don't run such great websites. Um. So, yeah,
it's just interesting to see that these complaints came out
as early as a D two and and his his
text file is much longer than what I've indicated. But um,
bbs is of course kept on going throughout the eighties
and into the nineties, and as we've said, they're still
out there today. It's just there're no what we're near
(24:05):
as prevalent as they used to be right now. Uh. True,
BBS is not on the Internet. It's not you know
there there are there are approximations. I mean, you can
think about this that the Internet is basically a gigantic
form of this. But because they're all kinds of message
boards that you can post too, in places to upload
(24:27):
and download files from and and online communities. But uh,
you know, a BBS itself is a very limited uh world,
if you will, if you'll accept that as a term there,
and um, yeah, I think that for for the poster
of that post, Um, it's obviously something. It was obviously
something very special. He liked that community, uh, and that
(24:50):
particular environment. And the more people it's like you you
have your uh, your band, your favorite indie band, and
then they finally get you complain that nobody ever likes
them in everyone likes and they totally sold out exactly.
Super Chunk was on NPR. What is up with that? Dude?
I saw super Chunk in nineteen nine. Okay, I'm getting
(25:10):
a little ahead of it. Yeah, I'm getting off topic anyhow,
But yeah, it's it was. It was that kind of
loyalty and interest in the BBS world that I think
inspired that, and I mean causes a lot of people
now to think back on it, uh favorably. In fact, Um,
you know, Jason Scott, did you see this the BBS
(25:31):
documentary called the documentary? I saw that it was, Um,
I saw the website for it. Of course, don't have
access to the documentary, so I didn't get to watch it. Yeah,
they they, I think, get into much more granular detail
on bbs IS and and the whole culture. Eight different episodes, right, Yeah,
it's on several so you know, I'm sure it would
(25:54):
be fascinating. I just didn't have time to check it
out before. But but yeah, I mean, so there's there's
a lot to it, but those are those are the basics. Yeah,
and and some of the people who are really doing
important work in technology today, we're big into bbs IS
back in the eighties. So for example, well, I mean
there's the laws. Yes, Wozniak he uh, Steve Wozniac he
(26:18):
one of the founders of Apple. He was a big
proponent of bbs IS back in the day. And of
course he even used it to help people figure out
how to phone freak. He may remember our phone freaking
episode from several months back. But also there was a
guy who wrote a document on bbs as that got
spread around quite a bit. The document called the Bill
(26:41):
of Rights Light l i t E. Which was a
rephrased bill of rights that were It was designed to
kind of point out the issues that were surrounding um computer,
uh technology and how that relates to constitutional it's and
how it's a complicated issue, kind of really looking ahead
(27:03):
to see how the digital age is conflicting with basic
rights and and like how does it fit and where
does it not fit and where do we need to
tweak it so that it works properly. Was written by
a guy named John Perry Barlow. UH. Barlow is one
of the founders of the Electronic Freedom Foundation the e F. Yes,
(27:26):
so the e F continues today to try and and
shape public policy so that internet freedoms, things like net
neutrality remain untouched. They advocate for uh for net neutrality,
among other policies. So, uh, some people who are really
(27:47):
you know, movers and shakers in the technology world, we're
big into bbs IS back in the day. Yeah, that's uh,
that's definitely true, and um, you know, and and other
people knew it too as well, because the government of
the federal government in the United States had its I
on bbs IS And we're watching to see who was
on the different uh bulletin boards. I know that Steve
(28:11):
Jackson Games, which is an office favorite among uh some
gamers here at how stuffworks dot com. Their offices were
rated because they were hosting a bbs and the Secret
Service thought there was some illicit material on there about
hacking in computer networks. As it turns out there wasn't. Yeah,
but but BBSs did. Yeah, BBSs did provide some people
(28:35):
the ability to to either share tips on how to
pirate software or actually would include pirated software as a download. Um,
there were hackers specific bbs is. Uh. In fact, a
lot of the early ones were hackers specific. We're not
just not just hackers as in programmers, but hackers asn't
(28:55):
the people who enjoy breaking into systems, learning how they
work than exploiting them. So yeah about them, Yeah I
should Hey wait a minute, anyway, Yeah, there there were
there were some kind of shady bbs is out there,
and even some of the general purpose bbs has had
some material on it that probably wasn't appropriate for all eyes.
(29:18):
I can actually, I won't say maybe definitely. I was
a kid and I was on those bbs is, and
I know that there was material A lot of them
actually had. UM, had ways of of making you talk. No,
they had ways to to guard against that. You had
to use a like a credit card to um access
certain parts of the BBS. And it wasn't necessarily that
(29:41):
they would charge you, but they wanted the credit card
to to prove that you're an adult. Right, if you're
old enough to have a credit card, then you're old
enough to get access to this material. And uh, you know,
some of them followed that and some didn't. And yes,
you can build your own BBS even to this day.
You can either use a dial up modem and have
people call in physically to that machine and explore your BBS,
(30:03):
or you can use a tell net client and have
people tell net into it. Um. But the you know,
the era of the BBS is is. I mean, there's
still a few out there that are still that still
have their die hard fans who who contribute and are
big into that community, but the Internet is really um
appropriated a lot of that. Yeah. It's kind of ironic
(30:26):
too in a way that as popular as electronic communication
is now, the BBS surged in popularity and has now
receded to the point where people like the one you
quoted a few minutes ago are probably happy again because
just the you know, they're still back to the original
little communities of people little pockets of people. Yeah maybe,
(30:47):
um yeah, because I I often will think of a
BBS as if you it's sort of similar to what
would happen if you grabbed a web server and then
you severed its connection to the rest of the Internet,
so you could connect directly to the at web server,
but you could not connect to any other web page,
like you couldn't go outside the boundaries of that server,
say somewhere kind of things. And again we're talking about
(31:09):
you know, text based stuff, right and and interesting askey art. Okay,
well that wraps up this discussion on bulletin board Systems
b b S. I hope you enjoyed it this little
walk down Internet memory lane or network memory lane, body
memory lane. To bring back that joke. If you have
(31:31):
any topics you would specifically like us to cover, you
can let us know on Facebook or Twitter are handle
there is tech stuff HS double you or you can
shoot us an email. That address is tech stuff at
how stuff Works dot com and Chris and I will
talk to you again really soon for more on this
(31:51):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com. So learn more about the podcast click on
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