Synthetic Monitoring

Simulate visitor interaction with your site to monitor the end user experience.

View Product Info

FEATURES

Simulate visitor interaction

Identify bottlenecks and speed up your website.

Learn More

Real User Monitoring

Enhance your site performance with data from actual site visitors

View Product Info

FEATURES

Real user insights in real time

Know how your site or web app is performing with real user insights

Learn More

Infrastructure Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Instant visibility into servers, virtual hosts, and containerized environments

View Infrastructure Monitoring Info
Comprehensive set of turnkey infrastructure integrations

Including dozens of AWS and Azure services, container orchestrations like Docker and Kubernetes, and more 

Learn More

Application Performance Monitoring Powered by SolarWinds AppOptics

Comprehensive, full-stack visibility, and troubleshooting

View Application Performance Monitoring Info
Complete visibility into application issues

Pinpoint the root cause down to a poor-performing line of code

Learn More

Log Management and Analytics Powered by SolarWinds Loggly

Integrated, cost-effective, hosted, and scalable full-stack, multi-source log management

 View Log Management and Analytics Info
Collect, search, and analyze log data

Quickly jump into the relevant logs to accelerate troubleshooting

Learn More

Computer messaging before the Web – A visual timeline (1960-1990)

We humans are (mostly) a social breed. Ever since we have been able to connect computers together, we have enjoyed using our computers to communicate with each other. These days it’s hard to imagine a life without computer messaging such as email, IM and other applications that let us communicate cheaply and over great distances.
We decided to take a look at the history of computer messaging, the technologies and services that ultimately led us to where we are today. Our focus has been on electronic messaging from one computer user to another, pre-Web. So forget about the telegraph and other inventions that don’t involve ones and zeros.
Let’s dive right in with this timeline we’ve put together with different ways people have communicated using computers, from the early days in the ´60s until the start of the Web in the early ´90s.

Some of the above systems aren’t that well known anymore so let’s go through them one by one.

Compatible Time-Sharing System, 1961

The Compatible Time-Sharing System, or CTSS for short, was developed at MIT’s Computation Center. It was one of the first time-sharing operating systems which let several users share one mainframe computer and its resources.
CTSS was one of the first systems to include user-to-user communication functionality, much like we use email today.

CompuServe, 1969

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service that was available in the US. It was a huge network with various resources that you could connect to, kind of like a crude predecessor to the Web. The service declined in popularity during the ‘90s as the Internet grew more popular.
The service had discussion boards, chat rooms and electronic mail which users had access to.

Email, 1971

Although email had been around in different forms on time-sharing mainframe computers it wasn’t until 1971 it began to look the way it does today. It was then Ray Tomlinson came up with the idea to separate the name of the user and the machine with an “@” sign. Email grew to become the killer app of the ARPANET (the forerunner to today’s Internet).

Talkomatic, 1974

Talkomatic was developed in 1973 by Doug Brown on the PLATO System (a system for computer-based education). The software was like a chat room with windows displayed for each logged-in user. Anything a user typed was instantly transmitted so all users could see each other type.
By many it is seen as the original text-only chat room.

Bulletin Board Systems, 1978

Bulletin Board Systems, BBS for short, made it possible for people to set up modem-connected computers that others could dial into and gain access to via a terminal. The BBS software had functionality for leaving messages to other users, upload and download files and much more.
The BBS was run by an administrator called Sysop and often the BBS was just someone’s home computer which he granted others access to, but in other cases the BBSs were huge systems with multiple phone lines and some were run commercially.
The first BBS software was developed by Ward Christensen during the great blizzard of 1978 in Chicago.

Usenet, 1980

Usenet was and still is a service on the Internet where users can post messages (news) into categories called newsgroups.
It was developed at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University during 1979 and became publicly available in 1980.

FidoNet, 1984

FidoNet was created as non-commercial network in 1984 by Tom Jennings. It’s a worldwide network used for communication between different BBSs. Thanks to FidoNet, BBS users could send messages all over the world by connecting to a local BBS.
FidoNet is still running today but is considerably smaller than during its peak in the ‘90s because many BBSs have been closed down after the Internet became popular.

Talkers, 1984

Talkers were chat systems that allowed people to talk to each other over the Internet. In many ways they were the predecessors of today’s instant messaging applications.
By logging in to a talker system (often through telnet) users could connect to a text-based chat room and talk to other logged-in users. Talkers were like MUDs (länk) but just with the chat function and no gaming.

Quantum Link, 1985

Quantum Link was an online service for the Commodore 64 and 128 computers. The service featured electronic mail, chat rooms, instant messaging and much more. An interesting fact is that Lucas Arts’ famous SCUMM game system got its start as a graphical chat in Quantum Link.
Quantum Link was later renamed and became America Online (AOL).

IRC, 1988

Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is a real-time Internet chat and conferencing system. Users connect to channels to discuss different topics and it’s also possible to communicate one-on-one.
IRC is still today a very popular way of communication over the Internet.

Prodigy, 1988

Prodigy, launched in 1988, was an online service similar to CompuServe. By 1990 it was the second-largest online service provider after CompuServe. Unlike CompuServe, Prodigy had a graphical user interface instead of a command line interface which made it easier to use. The service also pioneered the concept of online communities.

AOL, 1989

America Online, or AOL, grew out of the previously mentioned company Quantum Link. After it had launched its service for Commodore 64 and 128 the company went on to launch services for the Mac and the PC called AppleLink and PC Link.
The company changed its name to America Online in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest service provider during the ‘90s.

To be continued . . .

These were some examples of computer messaging over networks during the early days before the invention of the World Wide Web. Some are alive and well even today.
One has to have experienced the speed (or rather the lack thereof) of connecting to a BBS in the old days and the excruciating wait for the text screens to transfer to really appreciate the speedy applications and interfaces we have today.
Maybe we should add a 300 baud emulation mode to our Pingdom Tools full page test? 🙂
Next week we will continue our journey through the history of computer messaging by looking at software and systems released during the ’90s until today, i.e. during the era of the World Wide Web.
Part two is available here:

 

Introduction to Observability

These days, systems and applications evolve at a rapid pace. This makes analyzi [...]

Webpages Are Getting Larger Every Year, and Here’s Why it Matters

Last updated: February 29, 2024 Average size of a webpage matters because it [...]

A Beginner’s Guide to Using CDNs

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Websites have become larger and more complex [...]

The Five Most Common HTTP Errors According to Google

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Sometimes when you try to visit a web page, [...]

Page Load Time vs. Response Time – What Is the Difference?

Last updated: February 28, 2024 Page load time and response time are key met [...]

Monitor your website’s uptime and performance

With Pingdom's website monitoring you are always the first to know when your site is in trouble, and as a result you are making the Internet faster and more reliable. Nice, huh?

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL

MONITOR YOUR WEB APPLICATION PERFORMANCE

Gain availability and performance insights with Pingdom – a comprehensive web application performance and digital experience monitoring tool.

START YOUR FREE 30-DAY TRIAL
Start monitoring for free