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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bulletin board system | 1/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:20:30.825740+00:00 | kb-cron |
A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal or a terminal emulator. Once logged in, the user performs 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. In the early 1980s, message networks such as FidoNet were developed to provide services such as NetMail, which is similar to internet-based email. Many BBSes also offered online games in which users could compete with each other. BBSes with multiple phone lines often provided chat rooms, allowing users to interact with each other. Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web, social networks, and other aspects of the Internet. Low-cost, high-performance asynchronous modems drove the use of online services and BBSes through the early 1990s. InfoWorld estimated that there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone in 1994, a collective market much larger than major online services such as CompuServe. The introduction of inexpensive dial-up internet service and the Mosaic web browser offered ease of use and global access that BBS and online systems did not provide, and led to a rapid crash in the market starting in late 1994 to early 1995. Over the next year, many of the leading BBS software providers went bankrupt and tens of thousands of BBSes disappeared. Today, BBSing survives largely as a nostalgic hobby in most parts of the world, but it is still a popular form of communication in Taiwan (see PTT Bulletin Board System). Most surviving BBSes are accessible over Telnet and typically offer free email accounts, FTP services, and IRC. Some offer access through packet switched networks or packet radio connections.
== History ==
=== Precursors === A precursor to the public bulletin board system was Community Memory, which started in August 1973 in Berkeley, California. Microcomputers did not exist at that time, and modems were both expensive and slow. Community Memory 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 influential in the mid-1970s. Community 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). It did offer the ability to tag messages with keywords, which the user could use in searches. The system acted primarily in the form of a buy and sell system with the tags taking the place of the more traditional classifications. But users found ways to express themselves outside these bounds, and the system spontaneously created stories, poetry and other forms of communications. 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. Similar functionality was available to most mainframe users, which might be considered a sort of ultra-local BBS when used in this fashion. 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. 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 later become common on BBSes.
=== The first BBSes ===
Early modems were generally either expensive or very simple devices using acoustic couplers to handle telephone operation. The user would pick up the phone, dial a number, then press the handset into rubber cups on the top of the modem. Disconnecting at the end of a call required the user to pick up the handset and return it to the phone. 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. 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. These machines typically only supported asynchronous communications, and synchronous modems were much more expensive than asynchronous modems. A number of modems of this sort were available by the late 1970s. 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. The first public dial-up BBS was developed by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, members of the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists' Exchange (CACHE). According to an early interview, when Chicago was snowed under during the Great Blizzard of 1978, the two began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS. The system came into existence largely through a fortuitous combination of Christensen having a spare S-100 bus computer and an early Hayes internal modem, and Suess's insistence that the machine be placed at his house in Chicago where it would be a local phone call for more users. Christensen patterned the system after the cork board his local computer club used to post information like "need a ride". CBBS officially went online on 16 February 1978. CBBS, which kept a count of callers, reportedly connected 253,301 callers before it was finally retired.
=== Smartmodem ===