Instant messaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Instant messaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Instant messaging actually predates the Internet, first appearing on multi-user operating systems like CTSS and Multics[1] in the mid-1960s. Initially, many of these systems, such as CTSS'.SAVED, were used as notification systems for services like printing, but quickly were used to facilitate communication with other users logged in to the same machine. As networks developed, the protocols spread with the networks. Some of these used a peer-to-peer protocol (eg talk, ntalk and ytalk), while others required peers to connect to a server (see talker and IRC). During the BBS phenomenon that peaked during the 1980's, some systems incorporated chat features which were similar to instant messaging. Freelancin'_Roundtable was one prime example.

In the last half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Quantum Link online service for Commodore 64 computers offered user-to-user messages between currently connected customers which they called 'On-Line Messages' (or OLM for short). Quantum Link's better known later incarnation, America Online, offers a similar product under the name 'AOL Instant Messages' (AIM). While the Quantum Link service ran on a Commodore 64, using only the Commodore's PETSCII text-graphics, the screen was visually divided up into sections and OLMs would appear as a yellow bar saying 'Message From:' and the name of the sender along with the m"