# Before the internet there was ...



## gully_foyle (Aug 27, 2010)

Here's a topic for you. What online services existed before the internet and can anyone help me track down the name of one particular online service?

I'm old enough to remember monolithic mainframes with removable hard disks and punch card readers. Back then mainframes could communicate to each other and mainframe operators could text each other through console line commands. Then IBM brought out it's VM system, sort of like today's virtual servers, and it had a new communication tool called email that allowed us to send emails to any networked terminal user. Ofcourse we had various forms of dial ups and then home computing combined with dialups to give us BBS or Bulletin Boards wherein we could start swapping files from home. Then the internet turned up, or at least became commercially available to us all.

So, apart from the obvious ones like paper, telephones, radio and telegrams, what other forms of communication preceded the internet?

And more specifically, for a while there in the late eighties there was an online system being rolled out in Australia and I am pretty sure it existed in the UK and my wife remembers it existed in France. This was a small console that plugged into your TV and phone line and was essentially a dialup service through which you could access airline information, weather, news, etc. It was a total flop in Australia. Does anyone else remember it and what it was called? Bonus points for anyone who remembers the name of the Australian version.


----------



## dustinzgirl (Aug 27, 2010)

Drums, fires/colored smoke.


----------



## Anne Lyle (Aug 27, 2010)

I don't know about the dialup version, but British TVs had free Teletext and Ceefax services in the 80s, 90s and even until quite recently, I think. Sports scores, weather, TV listings, jokes, that kind of stuff. Sort of like the internet only really slow and rubbish 

And yes, I first learnt to program using punch cards. Mind you, this was in a girls' grammar school in deepest Worcestershire - they've probably only just upgraded to Windows 3.1...


----------



## Happy Joe (Aug 27, 2010)

Let us not forget flag waving and heliographs/flashing lights...
Teletype was used for years by news and weather services, as was early fax.

Enjoy!


----------



## Vertigo (Aug 27, 2010)

In the '80s I worked on offshore oil survey software and we used to use BASIC running on HP machines. One of the reason for this choice was that it was not a compiled language. Although compiled languages are faster, the only way we could send out mods to the software on a live job was to Telex them to the operators who then typed the mods directly into the program and this was not possible with a compiled language. So for us Telex was our "internet". I shudder when I think about it now! With no mobile phones the only other form of communication was a telephone radio link. That is you telephoned a radio operator in say Wick who then contacted your people on the boat by radio and linked the two together, with the radio operator manually clicking the transmit button when the telephone caller was talking!

Oh, those were the days...


----------



## chrispenycate (Aug 27, 2010)

When we started the studio here, a mere thirty years ago, we had a teletype plug on the office wall (actually, I've just checked, and it's still there, even if it is some decades since anything has been plugged into it), and a machine which could scan and transmit black and white photos, or store them on perforated paper tape. This was, at the time, the principal way of getting newspaper pictures from country to country, and made Fax machines look rapid and modern.
It also had a "text" mode, and the possibility of sending a message on three telephone wires (to three different destinations; no parallel acceleration) at the same time.

None of this involved any computing logic, although that had been available for some considerable time by then, and the only electronics was round the photocell in the scanner; essentially mechanical, it could have been developed round a telegraph wire or even a semaphore or heliograph.


----------



## TheDustyZebra (Aug 31, 2010)

CB radio! I know, you excluded radio, but I'm thinking that's a different sort. CB was very much an internet precursor, being mobile and a group thing for social interactions, with usernames and a language of its own.

But that doesn't help with the question of other online services, and I have no clue on the ones for which you search. Sorry!


----------



## Deathpool (Aug 31, 2010)

I don't know anything that's worth knowing.


----------



## TheDustyZebra (Sep 1, 2010)

Ahh, but knowing your own limitations is worth something.


----------



## gully_foyle (Sep 1, 2010)

Yes! CB radio was a huge phenomenon when I was a lad, just like texting and facebook is for the kiddies these days.


----------



## Happy Joe (Sep 1, 2010)

CB radio is still hanging on here in the states, although there seem to be many intellectually challenged people talking.

We still use it for vehicle to vehicle communication (and friendly harassment) when traveling in groups on off road trails.  (That reminds me I need to replace my co-ax).

Enjoy!


----------

