imlach

Wow - watching the BT advert with the two californian geeks from the 70's advertising broadband made me think...

I've been online in one form or another for 21 years (ie, in electronic contact with others over an electronic medium).

I'm sure those at Uni in the late 70's/early 80's will beat that, but I wasn't at Uni then, so that's not fair!

I remember being the primary school computer expert in 1980 too. I got special dispensation to be 'on call' from my class to help any of the teachers with loading programs on the (ssshh....) Commodore Pet.

On-call at 10 years old! If only I'd have enough bonce to arrange a contract in those days.....could have made my fortune by 11.

imlach

My first modem was a 1200/75 and 300 baud acoustic coupler.....and I've still got it.

It's so slow, you can almost hear the individual bit tones

imlach

Errr......a tape recorder wouldn't help you get online.....

imlach

Saying that, the BBC used to transmit data over the airwaves sometimes which you could record onto tape, and then load into your BBC Micro/Electron/whatever.

However, I don't rate that as "online".

pslewis

1978 I was conversing with the next office electronically - with a PET?

I just remember being amazed at the old Star wars games - each refresh screen (about 20 seconds!) showed where the Klingons were and if you launched a Photon Torpedo where that was too .... truly mind blowing!! ha ha ha !!

Look at the games now! whats real and what isn't?!

So, that makes, what? 25 years by my reckoning!

Pete