IT REALLY
WORKS!try it ↓
WORKS!try it ↓
FItem 24-1140
Click the screen and type. On a phone, use the keyboard button.
Click the screen and type. On a phone, use the keyboard button.
A video terminal has almost no computer in it: it shows the characters that arrive and sends the ones you type. With a modem it could call another computer over a phone line, whistling and warbling while the two agreed on a speed.
A bulletin board was someone's computer with a phone line. You dialled it; if the line was busy you tried later. The caller on the line had the board to themselves: reading messages, leaving replies, downloading files, or paging the owner, the sysop, for a chat.
The first one went online in Chicago in February 1978, built during a blizzard that kept its two founders snowed in. By the late 1980s there were thousands.
At 1200 bits a second text arrives at about 120 characters a second, several times faster than most people read. At 300 it came in at roughly reading speed, and a single game could take an hour to download.