A brief history of Usenet...

[sbisson]

...from Google.

I'll always have a soft spot for Usenet. It's where I began my online life, back in (shock horror) 1986...

Comments

[mort666.livejournal.com]

One has to wonder where Google managed to get the first article from given they didn't exist back then nor did Dejanews who Google acquired to get the original archives..

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

They got donated the tape archive from (AFAIR) MIT.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

There was an article about it, linked to from /. a while ago.

Seems they went around asking people for any old backups of news that they had from days of yore and various people gave them the information.

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, Simon. That does bring back old memories. I got reliable interent access in 1983, having moved from American Express, who at the time forbade access to the internet for any purpose, to Amdahl who encouraged people to try our this 'new' technology. I was a usenet lurker for quite a while. It took a while to find it but my first posts seem to start at 1991 (comp.sys.amiga.*). Searching for my name is pretty much useless since 'Rene Vega' is a common name. Thankfully I recall my old email addresses: rzv30@amdahl.com, draco@amdahl, draco@ivorytower, draco@apple, etc.

So, though I am an olde computer hobbyist dating back to 1974, building 4K RAM 6502 systems from scratch (as in etching the circuit boards, wire wrapping prototype boards), and being a huge fan of the old style dial-up BBSs, I didn't find the 'net until much later.