Ars Technica reports that Ward Christensen, the co-creator of the computer bulletin board system—a sort of precursor to the internet as we know it today—has died at age 78.
Popular throughout the 1980s and early '90s, bulletin board systems—better known as BBSes, or just "boards"—enabled users to dial into remote computers via landlines to post public messages and share private exchanges with other registered users, a bit like a modern Discord server. Christensen and co-creator Randy Suess came up with the idea as a way to stay in touch with other members of the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists' Exchange during a blizzard that blew through the Great Lakes region in 1978. CBBS, as it was known, went online in February of that year.
