>  JD> were no handhelds to speak of 20 years ago 
 >
 > True but there was text messaging called 'email' usually done from terminals
 > and sent magically to lands far, far away to people I never, ever met before
 > since.  They would text message back - called replies for some strange reaso
 > and I assumed at the time they also were using some terminal wherever they
 > were.  The connection(s) in between was known at the time as the internet.
 >
 > I often wonder what became of all that.
 >

Are you sure it wasnt ARPANET (I think that is what it was called)??
The internet started pretty much in the mid to late 90's (at least for
the populace at large).  If you want to get technical about text
messaging, then we were doing that in Fido in the 80's  It was called
netmail, and of course the reply was called just that .  In some
cases it was even instantaneous.

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