Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the BBS and internet pioneer, has died
Ars Technica reports that Ward Christensen, the co-creator of the computer bulletin board system—a sort of precursor to the internet as we know it today—has died at age 78.
Popular throughout the 1980s and early '90s, bulletin board systems—better known as BBSes, or just «boards»—enabled users to dial into remote computers via landlines to post public messages and share private exchanges with other registered users, a bit like a modern Discord server. Christensen and co-creator Randy Suess came up with the idea as a way to stay in touch with other members of the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists' Exchange during a blizzard that blew through the Great Lakes region in 1978. CBBS, as it was known, went online in February of that year.
Other BBS software followed in short order, as did more advanced functionality including the ability to share files, which Christensen also played a major role in. Prior to developing CBBS, he created the XMODEM file transfer protocol, a name that will stir memories amongst online oldsters: In order to compensate for bad connections and noisy lines, XMODEM breaks up data into packets and ensures that each packet was successfully received before sending the next. It doesn't sound like much now but believe me, back in the day this was a big deal.
Naturally, games also became big: «Door games,» as they were formally known—a reference to the way BBS software interfaced with external applications—like Trade Wars, Solar Realms Elite, and VGA Planets enabled users to compete against one another in asynchronous online combat. Some, like Trade Wars, gave players a limited number of daily turns they could spend in chunks as large or as small as they liked, while others let users submit their turns at any time over the course of a day and then resolved the outcomes at a specific set time. Again, pretty primitive stuff compared to today, but there are fewer gaming experiences more intense and enraging than getting a constant busy signal when you've
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