TECH NEWS – Without him, the Internet would certainly not exist in the form to which we have become accustomed over the past few decades…

Ars Technica has reported that Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the world’s first computer bulletin board system (BBS) and inventor of a popular file transfer protocol, XMODEM, has died at the age of 78. BBSs were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. You could use your phone to dial into other computers and send public and private messages to other registered users (like Discord these days, but without the phone calls). Christensen and Randy Suess wanted to stay in touch with other members of the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists’ Exchange during a snowstorm in the Great Lakes region in 1978. CBBS was born and launched on the Internet in February 1978.

Then other BBS software emerged: the more advanced ones were also good for file sharing, and Christensen had a role in that, having created XMODEM before CBBS. XMODEM divides data into packets and ensures that the next packet is not sent until the previous one has successfully arrived at the requestor. This gave rise to “door games”: a reference to the BBS software that interacted with external applications (Trade Wars, Solar Realms Elite, VGA Planets) so that you could fight others in asynchronous online battles. Trade Wars gave players a limited number of rounds per day, which could be played in any number of instalments, while others allowed users to send a command to take action at a fixed time at any time. Games were also distributed via BBSs. This is how the shareware version of DOOM was distributed, and in 1991 Apogee started the Software Creations BBS to distribute shareware versions of their own games.

Christensen has received many awards for his work. In 1992, he received two Dvorak Prizes. One with Suess for the creation of the BBS software, and one as a lifetime achievement award for “outstanding contributions to computer telecommunications, including the development of the XMODEM file transfer protocol, the first protocol widely used on personal computers”. In 1993, he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award, given to “individuals who have worked for many years in the public and behind-the-scenes arenas to advance the interests of technology users”.

God rest his soul.

Source: PCGamer