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Creator of Relay On BITNET, Predecessor of IRC, Dies (blogs.com)
tmjva writes: Jeff Kell passed away on November 25 as reported here in the 3000newswire. He was inventor of BITNET Relay, a predecessor of Internet Relay Chat using the REXX programming language.
In 1987 he wrote the following preserved article about RELAY and here is his obituary. May this early inventor rest in peace.
In 1987 he wrote the following preserved article about RELAY and here is his obituary. May this early inventor rest in peace.
As is all too common these days, both the summary and article are right, but the headline is wrong. Jeff Kell did not invent BITNET (Because It's Time NETwork or Because It's There NETwork). BITNET was developed in the early '80s by Ira Fuchs of CUNY and Greydon Freeman, Inc. of Yale. It was an early store and forward network based on IBM protocols.
Both the summary and article correctly credit Jeff with the invention of BITNET RELAY which was a predecessor of IRC. It was important, but was just a component of BITNET.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired