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?

I remember going to a seminar in the early 90s and hearing about the 'information superhighway' and how one day we would be able to pick and chose any TV programme to watch and order pizzas. Sounded unbeliveable.

It wasn't available when I was at university unless you went to a computer lab - and it was really boring.

I first started to use email at work in the late 90s but no one else I knew did so it was pretty limited.

I would say it was the early 00s when widespread use started to take off.

1995, dial-up tone with various high-pitched noises. Erratic. Email seemed so strange!

Mid 80s. University tutors used it to send jokes to each other. It was the original internet developed to transfer data for scientific research purposes.

1995 I did an organised trip to Pakistan India and Nepal thought it was strange that one Canadian guy kept disappearing when we arrived at a new place someone said he was checking his emails at an Internet cafe I thought it strange. Got our computer in 1999 and set up an email address and corresponded with my fiance who was working abroad at the time. I can still hear the dial up connection which took ages to connect we have tried to explain to our 3 teenagers how it "used to be" they think we are ancient

Courtesy of two friends who were utter geeks in the days when nobody knew what a geek was, I had internet at home (dial up) in 1993 AND my very own domain as a birthday present. I recall vividly looking at this thing and thinking "What? This will never take off. I would have preferred chocolates.". I should add - I don't like chocolate and rarely eat it!

Hmmm.. I was probably wrong about it not taking off....

I came back to work after maternity leave in 1994 or 1996 l don't remember which child it was. But suddenly we had screens hooked up to the internet. It was werid and l didn't know what to do
Before that we had 3computers in an it room that did stuff l didn't understand 🤣

My earliest Internet memory was probably going on a chat room and talking to people all the way from America and we all (parents and i) thought it was amazing!

I remember the modem connecting sound, that and not being able to use the phone if someone was online if you only had one line to the house.

Went to University in 1997 - remember the novelty of printing off comical adverts from parody adverts to decorate my room.

Also, Web 1.0 - there wasn't social media but specific forums and of course UseNet - which was the successor of bulletin boards.

Also being wary of anything with animation if you weren't on a high bandwidth connection like JANET.

Using ftp:// for large data downloads for projects.

DH was at University in 1993 - that was when there were specific UNIX SPARC terminals that were text only - green on black.

Thinking 100 GB was a big hard-drive and building my own PC in 2000.

Also when an email was a selling point at University - also they handed out ac.uk. addresses like sweeties.

1994- you had to queue in the university library for about half an hour for a 15 minute slot. 15 minutes was just about enough time to read an email from my dad (who was the only person I knew with an email address), send a reply, and then get about half way through loading a webpage up. I couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about.

I remember the first hand held casio calculators. When i started my job in 1979 it was handwritten records then 2 years later they ran a computer in parallel and it was omly 2 records different at the end of the year
We bought a viglen computer back in the early 90s but i don't remember getting my email address. My oldest emails date back to 2004 but suspect i had a lot longer

I remember the server spines - sometimes they looked like actual spines in that you would see a mass of network cable, wiring and twinkling LEDs usually in a corner of the room near the ceiling - they weren't always in a conduit.

As a young child under the age of 9 we had an Amiga computer, I remember playing the original simpsons game on it, lemmings, chuckie egg and lots of others. A friend had an apple computer which was dead boring apart from one game which was something to do with wildlife, like badgers, rabbits and weasels. I remember the first day I saw the internet, I used to go to computer club and would go on computers at lunch time if I was bored. A teacher showed me how to use a search engine and the first proper website was the dancing hamsters website (I believe it’s still there). As a teenager we then had our first windows computer and I was on there almost every night on chat rooms making new friends and learning online txt speak.

Pre internet, mid 80s. We prepared a spreadsheet, containing loads of variable information so my boss (sales) could prove to the marketing director that their sales forecasts were unrealistically high. He wanted a presentation that would be a doddle just few years later with powerpoint, but with early 1 2 3 spreadsheets, no. We could do simple graphs but that was about it. Come presentation day, he had us project the whole spreadsheet, it was 100s of rows and columns in size, on the screen. We set up macros so we could jump to the next bit of data/graph, but he kept asking to show info that he hadn't talked about in the pre meeting, so we ended up scrolling up and down, and side to side on all this date. Anyway, marketing accepted his forecast over theirs, but in the end both were way out, as forecasts usually are, but as the sales teams bonuses were based on the lower figures, we all got a good bonus that year. He actually employed a new member of staff to work on this spreadsheet, who got bored very quickly, and left.

I remember setting up my Hotmail email address in 1997. I still use it and because I got in early (maybe??) it's just my first and surname.

I told my manager that I had set up my own email - he was totally bemused and didn't understand why I'd need one.

My dad has had the same mobile number for probably 30 years. In fact I remember him complaining that they had added the number 7 into his number, so instead of being 09XX XXXXXX, it was now 079XX XXXXXX

Mid to late 90s we got the internet at home It was dial up and incredibly slow, but first week I put it through its paces in the evenings to see what it could do.

I found an old book my Grandad used to have that I loved, and I ordered an Enid Blyton book a colleague had mentioned he had always loved and couldn't find. I tracked it down in an Australian bookshop and got them to send it to him to the office in northern England. It was wonderful when it arrived in the post, his face was a picture. He recalled he had mentioned it at some point but couldn't remember to whom. He contacted the bookshop to ask who had sent it but I had primed them in advance to keep stumm. Five years later when I left I finally let on.

It was a revelation that you could find virtually anything you wanted, and one I have profited from ever since.

@ChilliCheese123

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

You went to the library and used card catalogs (essentially 3 x 5 cards in a 'tray' in a wooden cabinet full of these trays). You looked up the Dewey Decimal location on the book and then found it on the shelves (aka stacks).

Unless you were me, in which case you had to fill out a request form for books (maximum three per day), give it the long-suffering librarian and come back the next day to see if your books could be retrieved from the stacks and, if they could, if they had relevant information. If not, too bad so sad; repeat the whole process.

This was done to the accompaniment of shrieking peacocks (outside but still too close for comfort) whose cries sounded like incoming mortar shells.

Good times.

I was born in 1980 so remember first using it at University in a library and being amazed. The queue to log on was always so long!

@ChilliCheese123

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

You went to the library - village, nearby town or later University.

When I started university we got a sheaf of kindly guidance from our tutor as a welcome (some of it, I still come across occasionally). One paragraph reminded us that it would be considered a little rude and disorganized if we 18 year olds did not check our email account at least as much as we checked our pigeon hole - "that is, at least once a day!"

I'd forgotten JANET, the memories are crowding in now.

To the hamster dance etc, I raise BadgerBadgerBadger...Mushroom, Mushroom!

1994. University. Everything was UNIX based. There were two email programs (elm - electronic mail and PINE - pine is not elm) Neither of them would be recognisable to todays teenagers who would probably mistake them for lines and lines of code.

There were online browsers though I forget their names now. Google was becoming a popular search engine and there was already quite a lot of information about many random things out there - enough to do some reasearch.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) allowed you to speak to random strangers all over the world.

There were bulletin board services if you knew where to look and I became a member of Monochrome and made a lot of friends many of whom I keep in touch with to this day. We used to have real life meets - big groups of us would meet up at universities, sleep on each others floors, go to the pub etc. etc. and now I tell my children never to meet strangers from the internet because I am a hypocrite!!

And yes JANET (Joint academic Network) was brilliant. I didn't realise how good though until |I had to use dial up for the first time.

We got our first computer, an Apple 2E clone, in about 1983/84. I was returning to uni and told DH I needed a typewriter, and he said let's get a computer instead. We bought it used. I think we must have driven the seller mad with phone calls and questions.

It would connect to some sort of primitive sharing platform as we downloaded a little piece of software called WP for kids. Our boys were very young but they did use the computer.

We bought a proper internet package some time in the early 90s at a local fair/exhibition. We were so excited! I too remember the screeching noise of connecting very well.

I remember sending my first text, but not my first email! There was a computer room at Uni - never even crossed the threshold. I did RSA word processing after graduating though as it was obvious knowing your way around a computer was necessary for many jobs.

I used to check my email (hotmail) via AOL (from a disk on a computer magazine) in the morning before work. I would set it off and go for a shower to let load line by line.