BBS:      TELESC.NET.BR
Assunto:  40 years of echomail
De:       Oli
Data:     Thu, 19 Feb 2026 18:55:48 +0100
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16 Feb 26 00:02, you wrote to All:

 CN> According to some old FidoNews issues and other sources, echomail was
 CN> introduced by Jeff Rush on 16 February 1986.



"In February 1986, Jeff Rush developed FidoNet's form of enews called
echomail.  As very few FidoNetters were familiar with the Usenet, they were
quite surprised at the popularity and rate of growth of echomail.  Within
two weeks, an international echomail conference, MODULA-2, was propagated
between Europe, Australia, and North America, and today the daily volume of
compressed echomail is over eight megabytes.  The social effects, both good
and bad, of echomail on the network parallel those of the Usenet."
--Randy Bush, FidoNet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/163381.163383
or
https://www.fidonet.org/inet92_Randy_Bush.txt



"HISTORY OF THE CONFERENCE MAIL SYSTEM

In late  1985, Jeff  Rush, a  Fido  sysop  in  Dallas,  wanted  a
convenient means  of sharing  ideas with the other Dallas sysops.
He created  a system  of programs  he called  Echomail,  and  the
Dallas sysops' Conference was born.

Within a  short time  sysops in other areas began hearing of this
marvelous new  gadget and  Echomail took  on a  life of  its own.
Today, a  scant year and a half later, the FidoNet public network
boasts a myriad of conferences varying in size from the dozen-or-
so participants  in the  FidoNet  Technical  Standards  Committee
Conference  to   the  Sysops'  Conference  with  several  hundred
participants. It  is not  uncommon for a node to carry 30 or more
conferences and share those conferences with 10 or more nodes."
--Bob Hartman, The Conference Mail System / FTS-0004 (1987)



 * Origin: kakistocracy (2:280/464.47)

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