h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I started using ICQ for the first time, I didn't realize that I didn't have to press return first for what I typed to be sent.

I am in the habit of typing, backspacing to correct spelling errors, or backspacing to better phrase what I am trying to say. This doesn't work too well on ICQ.

It can get one in trouble if one is trying to phrase something as delicately as possible....

I've seen web pages that say IRC dates back to 1989. I was on IRC in 1988 - well, they just called it Relay back then. I got expelled from a college due to a Relay addiction.

It's only when you're in ICQ chat that the recipient of your message can choose to see the conversation as it is being typed. They would have to change their layout settings to 'split style' to do this. When in IRC style, they don't see what you've typed until you press enter.

How is it possible that you were on any sort of IRC in 88 If I'm not mistaken, the first, even remote, form of IRC was on a college BBS between Norway, and hawaii in '93. Hence the beginning of the Eris Free Network (EFnet)

Back in 1988 it was called Relay, and existed over the "Bitnet" network.

If I remember correctly, on A VMS terminal, which is what the college I attended had, you'd type: "Relay [Node]" where [Node] was the Bitnet node you wished to connect to and which contained the Relay software.

You entered on Channel 1, Channels 1-99 were public, anything over 100 was private. (Anyone could go there by typing the command to get there, but it didn't show up via the list command. I hung out occastionally on Channel 451)

All the channels were numbered, though you could set topics. But you conversed in the same basic way you do today using MIRC or IRCLE. Many of the commands are still the same as well. Of course, there wasn't the ability to send sounds, or files, but the users would exchange email addresses so we could send files to each other in that way.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was just an extension of Relay. I am fairly sure I've read somewhere that IRC was born in 1989, I'll search for a reference.