BBS
/bee-bee-ess/ · noun · Hacker Culture · Origin: 1978
Definitions
Bulletin Board System — a computer server that users could dial into via modem to exchange messages, share files, and play text-based games. BBSes were the social networks of the 1980s and early 1990s, fostering local communities and hacker culture before the World Wide Web made them largely obsolete.
In plain English: A pre-internet online hangout you connected to by dialing a phone number with your computer modem — like a local social network run by some guy's basement computer.
Example: I spent my teenage years dialing into local BBSes at 2400 baud, downloading shareware one file at a time and getting yelled at for tying up the phone line.
Origin Story
The dial-up bulletin boards that were social media before the web
Ward Christensen and Randy Suess created the first **Bulletin Board System** in Chicago during the Great Blizzard of January 1978. Christensen had already written MODEM (later XMODEM) for file transfers; now he wanted a system where computer hobbyists could leave messages for each other.
A BBS was typically a personal computer with a modem and phone line. Users would dial in one at a time (most BBSes had only one phone line), read and post messages, upload and download files, and play text-based door games. It was social media via a 2400-baud modem.
By the early 1990s, there were an estimated 60,000 BBSes in North America. The rise of the World Wide Web killed most of them, but they left a lasting cultural legacy: online communities, shareware distribution, and the flame war were all invented on BBSes.
Coined by: Ward Christensen, Randy Suess
Context: Chicago, January 1978
Fun fact: Christensen built CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System) in just two weeks during the blizzard. Many BBS operators (called 'sysops') ran the systems from their bedrooms, paying for dedicated phone lines out of their own pockets.