BBS: TELESC.NET.BR Assunto: 40 years of echomail De: Carlos Navarro Data: Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:30:04 +0100 ----------------------------------------------------------- 19 Feb 2026 18:55, you wrote to me: Ol> "In February 1986, Jeff Rush developed FidoNet's form of enews called Ol> echomail. As very few FidoNetters were familiar with the Usenet, they Ol> were quite surprised at the popularity and rate of growth of echomail. Ol> Within two weeks, an international echomail conference, MODULA-2, was Ol> propagated between Europe, Australia, and North America, and today the Ol> daily volume of compressed echomail is over eight megabytes. The Ol> social effects, both good and bad, of echomail on the network parallel Ol> those of the Usenet." --Randy Bush, FidoNet: Technology, Use, Tools, Ol> and History (1993) Ol> https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/163381.163383 Ol> or Ol> https://www.fidonet.org/inet92_Randy_Bush.txt Ol> "HISTORY OF THE CONFERENCE MAIL SYSTEM Ol> In late 1985, Jeff Rush, a Fido sysop in Dallas, wanted a Ol> convenient means of sharing ideas with the other Dallas sysops. Ol> He created a system of programs he called Echomail, and the Ol> Dallas sysops' Conference was born. Ol> Within a short time sysops in other areas began hearing of this Ol> marvelous new gadget and Echomail took on a life of its own. Ol> Today, a scant year and a half later, the FidoNet public network Ol> boasts a myriad of conferences varying in size from the dozen-or- Ol> so participants in the FidoNet Technical Standards Committee Ol> Conference to the Sysops' Conference with several hundred Ol> participants. It is not uncommon for a node to carry 30 or more Ol> conferences and share those conferences with 10 or more nodes." Ol> --Bob Hartman, The Conference Mail System / FTS-0004 (1987) Thanks Oli. The date "19 February 1986" is considered the "anniversary of the introduction of Echomail by Jeff Rush" in FidoNews issues from 1990, 1991, 1998, and 1999, and the "anniversary of the invention of Echomail by Jeff Rush" in the 1996 issue. So it seems that some sysops began using Jeff Rush's Echomail tool (*) around 1985 - maybe that was a beta version. And then in February 1986 it was announced or released to the public. (*) Echomail was a set of programs, Scanmail and Tossmail (article by J. Brad Hicks in FidoNews Vol.3, N.24 - 23 June 1986) Carlos --- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20180707 * Origin: cyberiada (2:341/234.1) ----------------------------------------------------------- [Voltar]