Dec 25, 2019 12:00:00

[Dread:] Randy Sousse, creator of the online bulletin board, dies

by

Gerd Altmann

Randy Sousse , known for developing the early online bulletin board (BBS) , died at a Chicago hospital on Wednesday, December 10, 2019. 74 years old.

Randy Suess, Computer Bulletin Board Inventor, Dies at 74-The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/technology/randy-suess-dead.html

Sousse was born on January 27, 1945, between a police officer, Father Miland, and a nurse, Mother Ruth. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, Sousse returned to the University of Illinois and completed his studies after retirement. Later, he worked as an engineer at IBM, a major PC-related product, and

Zenith , a Swiss watchmaker, while participating in the Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists' Exchange (CACHE), which is hosted by local computer enthusiasts in Chicago. CACHE later came across IBM engineer Ward Christensen, who jointly developed a system that would serve as a prototype for online bulletin boards.

The idea of 'BBS' was born in late January 1978. A particularly strong snowstorm hit the Great Lakes area that day, and Chicago, where Sousse lived, was closed by nearly one meter of snow. Sousse, who has been unable to go out because of the snow, comes up with a system that allows anyone to easily exchange opinions while talking to Christensen over the phone. Mr. Kristen, who thought it would be a big project, tried to develop with CACHE members, but Mr. Sousse said, 'I can only pull my feet, so let's do it with two people.'

A new system, designed by Sousse and Christensen, is to build a central computer that CACHE members can connect to via telephone lines. They compare the new system to the grocery store Bulletin Board, where anyone can put leaflets on it, and name it Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) . This became the prototype of the later BBS.

In developing CBBS, Sousse worked on hardware. A modem that can send and receive data via a telephone line was attached to a PC called S-100. Regarding Mr. Sousse who built a machine for CBBS from the ready parts, Christensen recalls that 'Randy built the system from almost nothing.It is like building a machine with packing straps and chewing gum' .

The basement that Randy used as a hobby room.

Two weeks after the start of the work, Sousse built the CBBS, a software developed by Christensen that loads data every time someone dials in. If Christensen, a resident of Dalton, southern Illinois, was to host , CACHE members in Chicago would be charged long distance calls each time they used the system, so Sousse became the host and CBBS started. Between the start of the CBBS in 1978 and the abolition in the 1980s, Sousse's line had a total of 500,000 accesses.

Sousse subsequently developed a network called the 'Chinet (Chicago Network)', which can connect to the Internet via 22 telephone lines and satellite radio, and provided it not only to Chicago but also to the world. 'The CBBS and Chinet have spread to word-of-mouth enthusiasts through word-of-mouth and evolved into real-time chat rooms and online games, pioneering social media services later on,' said Jason Scott, an expert in network history. Now, global services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have emerged, but the basic concepts are the same as in Sousse's system, at best it's a bit more sophisticated. '

Sousse's son, Ryan, told the New York Times: 'We had access from Australia and Singapore, so the modem at home was making noises day and night. The noise and white noise that still lingers are still in my ears. '