Your earliest memories of email/internet

[Thepigeonsarecoming]

I was at university, the internet was nothing but text and boring. But we could send an email. Although since I had to use a log in on a uni computer I’d call home to see if if was received. Anyone else?

My first internet experience was at a friends house in 1996, we were only 12 and talking to people around the world and pretending to be older than we were. We got internet at our house a couple of years later and I got my own yahoo email address 😃ran up a massive phone bill in the first month! I used to love that game on encarta encyclopaedia set in the medieval castle!

I remember at uni the university bulletin board service. The chats on there, all very bland. I remember during my A levels (1991 ) dreading having to use the dial up on the computer but the horrid screech and whine I got used to I suppose. The regret of clicking on a picture to download and then the whole thing slowing to a crawl when you were trying to read the text with it. I realised it was going to be useful but I was so frustrated by those who had a lot of knowledge of programming etc (though a couple in my uni college were equally frustrated that they couldn't touch type like I could) I imagine all those skills are barely relevant now!

Oh I forgot. My first office job every morning and lunch time I had to go into my bosses office, log in to his emails and print them out, then he'd read them, record a response and I would type it on my computer, put it on a disk then use his email, paste in the text. Mainly though he'd have me send memos in return.

It would have been at uni circa 1995. I was amazed we had internet and I could enter a chat room and speak to someone in America. I used to do it all the time for the novelty. Does anyone remember the two tabs in the early days, 'What's new' and 'What's cool'?

AOL!!

We were one of the first in my school to get Internet, around 1997 time. My mum in hindsight, became very addicted to AOL chat room, the News one in particular. She met two fiancé's there and would spend all day and night sometimes talking to this community of people about current affairs. It's where we first heard about 9/11.

There was a Kidz chat too. A/S/L?

I think around 1994/1995ish, I was 18/19. My friends mum had a computer that connected to the internet. We'd heard there were nudes of Brad Pitt on the internet so tried, and failed, to find them.

I finally got online in 2003, I had 2 young kids by then so joined a parenting forum (UKParents) and have spent far too much time on the internet since then!

Pegasus email. Loved ICQ!

1978 with one of the first newspapers to go for computerised printing and copy sent in not by fax. Saw my first UK and NI telephone dial up data transfer home to office 1982. 1985 first in office data and email-type system. Home email, end of that decade and not much later the famous Nokia brick mobile.

Being taught about something ridiculous-sounding called 'electronic mail' at secondary school in 1990 complete with complicated diagrams of various servers and sitting there wondering why on earth anyon would ever need crossing send such a message.

Fast forward 8 years and I'm in my second year at university and I've just set up my first Hotmail account. The 4 PCs in halls are dial up and I can get a pigeon to deliver my message in a quicker time.

*to send, not crossing

Late 90s. My dad worked from home so his company paid for us to have internet. We were the first people I knew with it. I remember being a pre teen and finding myself in a chat roo where everyone asked a/s/l and quickly learned some phrases that opened my eyes!
Also, despite having internet it was so basic that still used encarta(?) for majority of my homework.

I used a PC at work from 1984... and went freelance in 1990 with an all number e-mail address. And a fax machine... everything arrived by fax and until the world caught on to email, I used to go through one or two rolls of fax paper a week.

I was at uni. Someone showed me a game where you could smack Anne Widdecombe and turn her crucifix upside down and her hair would make 👿 horns.

In the mid 1980s there was an online grocery shopping trial in the Midlands. My Dad worked in IT and is very very into tech and gadgets so he signed my mum up. I think the actual connection might have been via the TV at that point but there were a list of products which you chose from and they were delivered. I thought it was amazing!
I don’t remember much more about it until I got my GCSE results in 1995 and at that point my dad was working abroad. I remember being hunched over our massive desktop typing out my results to him!

That online grocery trial was on a tv show a few years ago - one of the series where they love through different decades in a house I think. Very forward thinking!

I remember my primary school getting their first computers in the newly built ICT room. None of us knew what ICT stood for so my friend said it stood for ‘it’s computer time’ . I can still picture the black Dell computers and the room in general actually. Our first lesson involved typing random things into ask Jeeves so not even Google! Also remember when we got slightly older thinking our teacher’s email address was slightly seedy because it was hotmail .

As for a computer at home, I didn’t actually get one until I was 12 which was late in the game compared to many of my friends. My Mum just didn’t see any need for one, she still barely used a mobile phone at that stage. Remember how excited I felt to have one and I also remember my Mum asking me to sign her up to friends reunited. I stupidly got into chat rooms when I was about 13 and spoke to randomers on there all of the time, didn’t give them any personal details though. Before Facebook it was all about MySpace, bebo and piczo. Never really liked bebo but absolutely loved MySpace. Msn too, as if could forget MSN!

I did use my Dad’s laptop when I visited him probably from the age of 8 but he had dial up internet so I could only use it for an hour or so before my Nan wanted to use the landline. Sad times.

It was approx 1985. I was working for a company that had a complex pricing system and postage costs varied by country and weight. My brother had a ZX81, and I had a black and white screen TV. I wanted to go on holiday but the person I worked with had left a month or two previously and despite me saying I was going on holiday and they needed a replacement nothing was done because I could effectively do the work of 2 people and I think they just wanted to save money. The company wouldn't let me go on holiday unless I could sort something for a YTS from the accounts dept (who was a little mathematically disadvantaged) to work. So with the company's permission we rigged up this computer programme, and it asked the questions in the order in which you asked the customer (product, product specifics, number of items, any other items and their specifics and number of items etc) and it arrived at a weight of the parcel at the end. You then selected the right country from a list and it calculated the shipping cost and gave a total.
COmpany boss was impressed with this new fangled technology so gave the go ahead.
Training of YTS day 1 went fine - it worked!
Day 2 training went fine - it worked again and the YTS really got the hang of it.

Day 3 was my holiday day 1 - it worked fine.
However Day 4 was a disaster. Despite leaving the whole set up turned on and with masses of labels on the sockets and equipment and all the plugs taped into the sockets and with labels saying DO NOT TURN OFF - the cleaner unplugged something to use the hoover and nobody could fathom how to set it back up to work! SO the poor YTS had to take all the details from the customer, ring another branch relay the info and wait for a price THEN ring the customer back. We lost a LOT of business and I got the blame for it. (It was actually the company's fault for not recruiting a replacement for the colleague that left, after that they got 2 replacements)

I remember going on a Greenday fan site in one of my very first forays online. Fan of the month was 8 year old Amber. It's always stuck with me!

@ ChilliCheese123

I don’t actually know how I would have got through a levels and university without the internet. How did you research anything ?

WHen I was at Oxford in the mid 1980s the entire catalogue for the Bodleian Library was a series of sticky labels (one per book) stuck in massive ledgers. If a label fell out of the ledger then that book would presumably have been lost for evermore.......

2000 - 2001 aged about 9 and dad spent all day installing the internet on the windows 98 home pc.

I don't remember using it a great deal though. I remember the dial up noise though

Getting told to get off the computer because my dad wanted to use the phone. PC's being the size of a suitcase with monitors the size of a portable television. Going on friends reunited before Facebook ever happened. Dial up taking ages to connect & having to add another hard drive because the computer one was full, the computer was massive with probably only 1GB storage when my first iPhone was 8GB & my current phone is 128GB. If someone 30 years ago had said then that we would have devices that could do Email & just about everything else & more that a computer then did & watch films & live television on that would fit in your pocket & nearly everyone would have one we would have laughed at them.

My brother getting a Sinclair ZX Spectrum for Christmas & needing a cassette recorder to play the games like Daley's Decathlon & Donkey Kong, within a year he had sold it & bought a Commodore 64 which had floppy discs, they were so slow to load games.

1996, was at college and had a couple of mates doing the BTEC Media course so they invited me to see this new thing called the internet in their classroom
Was nothing like we know now with all these social media outlets (FB, Twitter) and instantly connecting message wise
Just random being able to get up websites

Getting told to get off the computer because my dad wanted to use the phone.

Totally forgot about that!
Couldn't be on the phone AND the internet at the same time lol