Usenet
These days, people communicate almost instantaneously with each other via the Internet by sending messages, e-mails, and other communications to one other without even a thought. Many people are not even aware that the ability to send messages and articles to other people using the existing telephone networks was around almost ten years before the Internet was available to specialized users, let alone the public. One of the precursors of modern message boards and forums was a system that was known as Usenet.
Usenet is one of the communication methods over a computer network that is still, surprisingly, in widespread use to this day. Established in 1980, it was the culmination of various experiments in communication technology at the University of North Carolina and Duke Universities. It was conceived as a means by which the average person could get access to mail and file transfers through the new software that had been recently developed during this time. It essentially became a way for people to spread information amongst each other quickly, effectively, but more importantly, electronically.
The original architecture of Usenet was to organize articles that are posted by the users according to categories that are arranged by topics known as 'newsgroups'. Each of these topics is then further arranged into sub-hierarchies depending upon the subjects in the newsgroup. Therefore, you would have a newsgroup of say, Science, and the sub-topics would include things like mathematics, physics, and biology. In these topics there are 'threads' of conversation that are recognizable today in the way that forums are arranged. Most of the 'articles' are actually replies to primary article postings, and the line of articles that can be traced back to the original article is thus known as the 'thread'. Many newsreaders and news clients keep track of which articles the user has read and also arrange threads accordingly to make them easy and logical to follow.
Originally, Usenet worked on the basis of various individual servers communicating with each other. A user would post an article on their server. When that server communicates with the other servers, they exchange newsfeeds and the articles that are part of those feeds. The ideal is that, eventually, the feeds reach every server that is connected to the network. Unlike the networks of today, in the Usenet networks, it was the sender that would initiate a transfer, rather than the receiver, as many peer-to-peer networks do today. In an era where networks speeds were much slower and often unreliable, this was the preferred method.
The development of Usenet had many important influences on the way we communicate today. While they do not use the same framework, many message boards and forums on the Internet today still use the same layout and approach to posting messages. Usenet even had a cultural influence and brought about terms and practices that are generally known today, such as spamming and the term FAQ. While many people may not even be aware of it, Usenet is one of the great ancestors of the Internet that we know today.