STORY
Inventing Chat and Email Across a Leased Line in High School
Inventing Chat and Email Across a Leased Line in High School
- Between my ninth and tenth grade years, my parents moved our family 26 miles away from Gladstone to rural Colton, Oregon, where I would spend my final three years of high school.
- In those days, a 26-mile call was an expensive long-distance toll call, meaning I could not afford to call and talk to my childhood friends back in Gladstone on the telephone.
The Leased Line Discovery
- However, I soon discovered a technological bridge: Colton High School had a dedicated, long-distance leased data line connecting its terminal to the exact same regional HP 2000 BASIC centralized time-shared computer that I had used in Gladstone.
Inventing IDES: "Beware the Ides of Schwartz"
- Realizing that my Gladstone friends and I were logging into the exact same central machine simultaneously, I wrote custom software in HP BASIC on the central host:
- An interactive, real-time messaging system (the direct conceptual equivalent of modern IRC / instant messaging).
- A persistent, store-and-forward mailbox system (the direct equivalent of modern email).
- My friends christened the software IDES—standing for the Interactive Data Exchange System—purely so they could relish the immortal pun:
- "Beware the Ides of Schwartz!"
- Through this homemade network application, we chatted across the 26-mile gap throughout the school day, completely bypassing long-distance phone charges.
- Realizing that my Gladstone friends and I were logging into the exact same central machine simultaneously, I wrote custom software in HP BASIC on the central host:
- This early triumph of overcoming physical isolation through networked software solidified my lifelong passion for telecommunications, distributed systems, and networked community building.
What links here
These facts are as Randal recalls them, but much time has passed for most of this. If you find a factual error, please email realmerlyn@gmail.com.