Chapter 1 · 1985–1993

Before ORION

Springfield was already online before the library got involved. It just wasn't on the Internet.

• 267Bulletin board systems listed in area code 417
• Net 284Springfield's FidoNet network
• 1991MOREnet connects Missouri's universities
• May 1993Columbia's free-net goes live

The boards

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, going online in the Ozarks meant calling a bulletin board system. A BBS was usually one computer in someone's spare room or office, with one or a few phone lines. You dialed it directly, left messages, downloaded files, played door games, and hung up so the next caller could get through. A list kept by the BBS historian Jason Scott counts 267 boards and 257 sysops in area code 417 over the years.¹

Some ran for years. The Computer Matrix ran from 1984 to 1991 on TBBS software. Computer Tyme's board ran from 1987 to 1993. Moonrise lasted from 1989 to 1998, and Plaza Communications from 1991 to 2000. Others came and went in a season. A few had a mission: the Southwest Missouri Consort, from 1993, ran FrEdMail, a network built for teachers and schools.¹

FidoNet

Boards didn't have to be islands. FidoNet let them pass mail and discussion groups, called echoes, to one another, usually in the middle of the night when long-distance calls were cheapest. Each board had a numbered address, and boards were grouped into local nets. Springfield's was Net 284, the Springfield Area Net. Branson and the lake country were Net 297, Tri Lakes Net, and Joplin had its own Ozark Net.² In time a Branson board, Remote Access, became an Internet gateway for Net 297, so its users could send mail beyond the boards.¹

The universities get connected

The Internet itself reached Missouri through its universities. In 1991, thirteen public colleges and universities formed MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network, so they could connect to the National Science Foundation's NSFnet. It started at 56 kilobits per second. By 1993 the backbone ran at 1.5 megabits, and MOREnet was running a pilot to bring about 100 K-12 school districts online.³ Around the same time, Southwest Missouri State was letting its own students and staff dial in.⁴

The library was automating too. In 1991 the Springfield-Greene County Library put its catalog on a Dynix system, searched from text terminals in its branches.⁵ For many people, those amber and green screens were their first experience of looking something up on a computer.

Free-nets

The model for ORION came from Cleveland. In 1986 Case Western Reserve University opened the Cleveland Free-Net, a free community system organized like an electronic city, with a post office, a library, a courthouse and a public square, each a menu you could walk into. In 1989 its founders started the National Public Telecomputing Network to help other cities do the same.⁶

Missouri's first came in May 1993, when Columbia opened COIN, the Columbia Online Information Network, with MOREnet's help. MOREnet's Bill Mitchell described it as a free "civic utility." A Cape Girardeau paper, reporting on the launch, noted that Springfield was next in line.⁷ COIN would grow to about 10,000 members.⁸

In January 1994 the News-Leader ran a question-and-answer piece with library director Annie Linnemeyer, previewing a community system for local information and Internet access that was already in the works.⁹ Three months later, ORION opened.