BBS The Documentary: Episode 1 of 8: BAUD (The Beginning)

Jason Scott · 39.9K views · 2019-12-03 · 39:21

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Overview

The first episode of Jason Scott's eight-part BBS documentary, covering the predecessors and beginnings of the dial-up bulletin board system. It includes interviews with pioneers such as Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, who created the first dial-up BBS in 1978.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend the series as the definitive history of BBS culture and its Fidonet roots, especially for nostalgia and the origins of the demoscene.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2019–2025

Topics

History of computing Internet culture & memes Documentaries & storytelling

What people said

Eremotherium · 2020-04 · Strong recommendation
He also gave us the brilliant BBS: The Documentary [VIDEO] GET LAMP: The Text Adventure Documentary (shot in 1080p) [LINK] and (apart from his many talks) his podcast "Jason Scott talks his way out of it" which is just gem after gem of documented tech ephemera. [LINK] It's baffingly hard to quantify how many people he (and all the other great people at the Internet Archive) has affected with his bullheaded conservation efforts.
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effekt · 2023-10 · Recommendation
If you'd like to know where the demoscene came from, look no further than The BBS Documentary[1] The whole thing started w/ cracktros in the 80s and through the artscene it eventually evolved into its own scene that was entirely disconnected from its roots in piracy. 1. [VIDEO]
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mwest · 2022-12 · Recommendation
Some great nostalgia reading this. If you want more, check out Jason Scott's "BBS: The Documentary": [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Jason Scott, played through YouTube.

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