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RIP Ward Christensen
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Ward Christensen from Jason Scott’s ‘BBS: The Documentary.’
I’ve recently been remembering and exploring the “modem age” I was lucky enough to live through in the 90s. It shaped both my career and personal destiny. Ultimately all that was started by my using a modem to connect to my first bulletin board system or BBS.
The first BBS was created by Ward Christensen and his collaborator and Chicago-based collaborator Randy Suess. The story goes that they were friends from the Chicago computer users association (CACHE) and during one blizzard they decided to create a bulletin board program for the association. The rest was history. Most of the social experience we have of the Web today is pretty much informed by and based on the traditions and customs that emerged from BBS' and, in particular, that first BBS.
On top of this, Christensen kept his day job at IBM to the day he retired peaceably.
On top of this, he would simply do the work that needed doing. When he needed a
way to move files across the modem, he invented the xmodem protocol which, in
turn, would be the template for ymodem and later zmodem which added
interruption recovery as well as CRC checking.
Ultimately community and file swapping were the innovations that kindled my interest in telephony and internetworking and, well, everything about my life as I know it.
He seemed to be one of the humble visionaries of the tech field: he didn’t grandstand or try to hobnob with political leaders. He just created something that let people connect with each other in a genuine and casual way. And in that, he is a certain kind of hero. I hope he left behind many loving memories and many dear friends.