What do you do when you have to email someone? Take your smartphone out, slide to unlock and open your email app, right? Seems way too easy to make a fuss out of it but you would be amazed to know that things weren’t that easy always. Let’s take a trip back to 1984 when things were definitely not this convenient and sending an email was actually a hassle.
What follows is a video that shows a Thames TV host from 1984 explaining how you can send an email. The video shows a massive modem (Minor Miracles WS2000) being fired by a nerd that allows a connection of microcomputer to be established to the Prestel network. Before he can manage that, he has to make use of a phone connection and he does that by employing a huge rotary telephone.
Ah yes, this was the struggle of geeks back in the 80s to connect to the Internet. Once the connection has been established, the user would log into a service known as Micronet 800 that provided users with news pertaining to technology, software downloads along with other services such as bulletin boards and even early versions of personal homepage.
After this, another user in the video shows how an email is to be sent. The sent email is received by the host and as per the user, the email message can even be printed out. The first user dialed 7 digits to initiate the connection to Internet – compare that to simply asking Siri to connect to Wi-Fi.
The lesson to be learned? Be a little patient and thankful for all that you have!
