Editing Bulletin board system (section)

=== Precursors ===

A precursor to the public bulletin board system was [[Community Memory]], which started in August 1973 in [[Berkeley, California]]. [[Microcomputer]]s did not exist at that time, and modems were both expensive and slow. Community Memory ran on a [[mainframe computer]] and was accessed through terminals located in several [[San Francisco Bay Area]] neighborhoods.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Crosby|first=Kip|date=November 1995|title=CONVIVIAL CYBERNETIC DEVICES: From Vacuum Tube Flip-Flops to the Singing Altair - An Interview with Lee Felsenstein (Part 1)|journal=The Analytical Engine|publisher=Computer History Association of California|volume=3|issue=1|page=2|issn=1071-6351 |url=http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/chac/CHAC_Analytical_Engine/3.1_November_1995.pdf}}<!-- [https://web.archive.org/web/20050825165932/http://opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html An Interview with Lee Felsenstein (Part 1) in the newsletter of the Computer History Association of California] [http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/chac/CHAC_Analytical_Engine/3.1_November_1995.pdf pdf][http://www.3kranger.com/HP3000/History/AE1995-11.pdf pdf][https://web.archive.org/web/20060825214122/http://www.chac.org/engine-ascii/engv3n1.txt txt] {{cite journal|last=Crosby|first=Kip|date=November 1995|title=CONVIVIAL CYBERNETIC DEVICES: From Vacuum Tube Flip-Flops to the Singing Altair - An Interview with Lee Felsenstein (Part 1)|journal=The Analytical Engine|publisher=Computer History Association of California|volume=3|issue=1|issn=1071-6351 |url=http://www.opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100323072155/http://www.opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html|archivedate=2010-03-23}}--></ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Crosby|first=Kip|date=February 1996 |title=COMPUTERS FOR THEIR OWN SAKE: From the Dompier Music to the 1980 Computer Faire - An Interview with Lee Felsenstein (Part 2) |journal=The Analytical Engine|publisher=Computer History Association of California|volume=3|issue=2|page=8|issn=1071-6351|url=http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/chac/CHAC_Analytical_Engine/3.2_February_1996.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/chac/CHAC_Analytical_Engine/3.2_February_1996.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live}}</ref> The poor quality of the original modem connecting the terminals to the mainframe prompted [[Community Memory]] hardware person, [[Lee Felsenstein]], to invent the [[Pennywhistle modem]], whose design was influential in the mid-1970s.

Community Memory allowed the user to type messages into a [[computer terminal]] after inserting a coin, and offered a "pure" bulletin board experience with public messages only (no email or other features). It did offer the ability to tag messages with keywords, which the user could use in searches. The system acted primarily in the form of a buy and sell system with the tags taking the place of the more traditional [[Classified advertising|classifications]]. But users found ways to express themselves outside these bounds, and the system spontaneously created stories, poetry and other forms of communications. The system was expensive to operate, and when their host machine became unavailable and a new one could not be found, the system closed in January 1975.

Similar functionality was available to most [[Mainframe computer|mainframe]] users, which might be considered a sort of ultra-local BBS when used in this fashion. Commercial systems, expressly intended to offer these features to the public, became available in the late 1970s and formed the [[online service]] market that lasted into the 1990s. One particularly influential example was [[PLATO (computer system)|PLATO]], which had thousands of users by the late 1970s, many of whom used the messaging and [[chat room]] features of the system in the same way that would later become common on BBSes.