Thirty years ago today, Newcastle's Free & Public access to the Internet happened : newcastle
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Hello Reddit, what follows is an account of a bit of nearly forgotten Australian Internet history... (No I don't have a blog.)
On the 14th of August 1992, 30 years ago today, the Newcastle-based Public Access Unix system "Scorch", did its first email with the Internet.
It most certainly wasn't the first global computer network access available to anyone living in Newcastle. The University had computer-based messaging since the 1980s (DECnet, ACSnet) and joined the "network of networks" with the TCP/IP-based AARNet in the (?)1st week of March 1990. Access to AARNet, as you might have expected, was limited to Students, Staff, and organizations associated with the University (like BHP Labs), and it had a very savage by today's standards Acceptable Usage Policy: For Academic Purposes Only. And it was enforced with drastic consequences; being: losing the mainframe computer access privileges necessary for your coursework ==> no Uni Degree for you.
There was also the companies Pegasus, DIALix, and RUNX, providing a gateway to Internet email at the national scale; but those cost about $1/minute and had monthly fees, on top of the phone rental and long-distance call charges.
