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?

[EnlightenedOwl]

Freeserve aka snailserve. So slow

[Livingoffcoffee]

I can remember, must have been about 10yrs old, with all my classmates writing our first email addresses (pandagrl89 or something of the like!) on little scraps of paper and passing them around to everyone! We thought we were so cool 😂

[AtaMarie]

We had a PC at home in 1997 when I was a teen. I remember dialling up to the internet using the modem, and entering a chat room, where I talked to some teens who went to another school 20 miles down the road. Mind-expanding, not.

[Scarby9]

Never mind the internet - late 1970s I had a term's 'computer studies' aspart of General Studies in Sixth form. We spent an hour a week punching holes in index cards and threading them on knitting needles, thenhad a trip to the university to see a real live computer. Room with big cupboard size boxes in it which printed out a piece of flimsy paper with holes down the side daisy wheel printed with three words on. I do remember us all going 'Huh?'

[willywillywillywilly]

Does anyone remember
Dancing baby
Hamster dance
That spoof email that pretended to be a camera but actually it was a picture of a funny monkey
😄😄

[TeenPlusTwenties]

I started work (in IT) in 1988. The company had an internal mailing system (SERI - anyone know where I worked?).

[molifly14]

You couldn't use the phone and the internet!

[OuzoWoozo]

My first memory of seeing the Internet was in 1998. We didn't have much money growing up, so no fancy stuff, but my step dad always had a computer and we were not allowed to touch it.

I was 18 and my sister was 16 and we both had babies, within a couple of weeks of each other. Both living at home and were doing the night feed one night. She called me quietly into the dining room where my step dad's computer was switched on (he had gone for his 20 minute poo) and we saw that he was looking at dominatrix type porn.

We were clutching our little teenage pearls 😂 We never looked at him the same way for years after that.

That was is my first memory of the Internet 😂😂😂 I must have seen it before then but all those memories have been overshadowed by that one.

[tumpymummy]

Working in the 90s we had 1 computer between 3 of us!

[FinallyHere]

1981 came back to Poly from a year abroad without the dissertation I was supposed to have written, just a few weeks from submission date.

Hung around campus waiting for inspiration to discover that a mainframe computer had been installed at the end of summer term to allow bedding in over the summer holidays. The support staff were looking for early adopters, I dredged up some data, typed it in (gives you some idea of how few data points that it could be typed in in an hour) and found out what all the computer could do.

My dissertation was mostly graphs with a bit of narrative. A year later, everyone would have been wise to it but at the time it seemed marvellous and they gave me a very good mark.

Email was just within the campus.

Since then, PCs, email to everyone, direct dial phone at work, home broadband instead of sharing of taking it in turns to dial up and connect via phone.

now my iPhone has more capacity than that mainframe of 1981 and it fits in my pocket.

[mogloveseggs]

Email-only the IT A level students had it in sixth form

[Iwalkinmyclothing]

I got an email address at sixth form which I don't think I ever used. I remember my uni one though, [email protected]. Only ever used to swap emails with the library about fines, half my lecturers still did not 'do' email.

We did get dial up at home not long before I moved out, my dad was forever ferreting around on there and when the phone bill came after the first quarter my mum went bonkers and ran around the house disconnecting the phone wires. I don't know what he was doing. When did Friends Reunited get going? I remember him talking about that.

I showed DS1 and DS2 the original hamster dance page the other night and they were all "wtf is this boring shite" and it made me feel so old. For me early ish internet was AOL chatrooms, the Bam Margera message board, buslist and LiveJournal.

[contrmary]

In computer lessons at school we had BBC Micros which had a sort of email system. It worked like email in that you could send each other messages but was only on the local network.

I vaguely became aware of email and the internet in the early 90s when web addresses started appearing in magazines and TV programmes. Usually with really obscure addresses that appeared to be designed to confuse, like [email protected].

By mid-90s I knew people who had dial-up, they basically just used it for downloading pornography and The Anarchist's Cookbook etc.

The first time I actually used email or browser was with a university account in 1998. It was a big computer room full of male students sitting in the corner viewing porn where they thought nobody could see their screen. Occasionally a member of staff would shout at you for watching a video of something instead of using it for educational purposes. My most vivid memory was the first time I used it, clicking link after link after link. It was like I felt the need to view the whole internet there and then, as if it might be switched off at any moment. That and carrying round about ten floppy disks every time I went there because it was the only way of transferring things between the computer room and my own internetless PC at home.

[willywillywillywilly]

Hamster dance 😄

[PrincessHoneysuckle]

I was in my mid teens and I remember my dad yelling at me to put the phone down as he was on the internet and me yelling back coz I wanted to ring my friends

[Purplewithred]

I remember getting a pc with a mouse for the first time. Witchcraft!

And having a cube Mac with a single floppy disc drive and no internal memory to speak of. You put in the software disc and it did stuff, then took it out and put in the data, then took that out and put in the software again, repeat repeat repeat.

Clients didnt have email, we sent them letters or phoned them up. And internal post was in those envelopes with windy string.

[midgebabe]

1987
My dad showing me at work, I was rather impressed by his working with people on the west coast of America , he was explaining how email meant they could communicate easily despite the time differences

[Aroundtheworldin80moves]

Mid 90s (Primary school age)- we had a home computer. It was my dad's job. The internet was dial up and used for WORK. By secondary school (97) we had internet at school, in the computer room with its 15 computers (for a class of 32) where we learnt stuff like email.

A side note on my dad's job. He worked for the Civil Service. Until the day he retired, less than 10 years ago, he was paid a massive bonus for being able to use a computer as that was his contract- creating the software his department needed, and a bit on hardware. It was cheaper for them to keep him on part time on full wage until he wanted to retire than to give him early retirement when his department moved out of London.

[midgebabe]

I remember using punch cards for drawings
I remember by dad working with an analogue system for ship design
He borrowed a BBC micro form work one half term holiday

In my 50's now, it always makes me laugh when people say the younger generation grew up with computers

[devildeepbluesea]

We got our first home computer in about 1995, I remember dial up and playing minesweeper for hours. Still love minesweeper!

I vaguely remember working for a university in1999 and being so chuffed that I could access the internet AND I had an email address. Those were the days when most jobs we're still "offline".

[SchrodingersImmigrant]

"screeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwaaaaaaseeeeeeeeecccchhhhhchcrchrchrchrchreeeeeeeeech"

"No! Put that phone down! I need to send this!"

"Who has the bloody phone!!! I was doing something on an internet!"

[Ginfordinner]

As I am ancient I predate mobile phones, fax machines, home PCs, in fact all modern technology.

I remember the dial up modems where it took ages to connect, and you couldn't use the telephone at the same time. We got broadband when we moved house in 2003.

I didn't use a PC until 1994 when I changed jobs from field sales to working in an office in marketing. We used email at work in the on the work intranet, then got the software to email externally in the mid to late 1990s (I think).

I can't believe how young some of you are - email addresses at school. We didn't even have calculators!

When I was young, free and single the only means we had of contacting people quickly was by landline. We never had the 24/7 availability of being in contact that we do these days. I even had friends who didn't have a telephone in their house.

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

Ooh! First use in 90/91 ish when designing and digitising typefaces, sending info in house.

Then in about 93/4 we got Demonsied Dial up in all its squeaky loveliness. We worked out that our home PC, cobbled together from bits and pieces I got from work, was more powerful than anything DHs university had to offer its students. So he took it with him for 3 years.

In that time we upgraded PCs and got better, faster internet until in about 2000 Telewest brought us cable broadband.

My email address has no added numbers, has been mine since about 1993/4. My mobile phone number has been mine, unchanged since 1996!

I am old!

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

It was plugged in to the phone socket under the stairs, and took so long to load that I could go and have a bath while I was waiting.
This was a long time ago!

[CuriousaboutSamphire]

We didn't even have calculators! God yes! When I was about 13/14 a company at the local science park gave us all a calculator with LED - an absolutely cutting edge brick!