Ward Christensen, BBS Inventor And Architect Of Our Online Age, Dies At 78
A low-key giant
Suess died in 2019, and with the passing of both BBS originators, we find ourselves at the symbolic end of an era, although many BBSes still run today. These are typically piped through the Internet instead of a dial-up telephone line.
While Christensen himself was always humble about his role in creating the first BBS, his contributions to the field did not go unrecognized. In 1992, Christensen received two Dvorak Awards, including a lifetime achievement award for “outstanding contributions to PC telecommunications.” The following year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored him with the Pioneer Award.
Professionally, Christensen enjoyed a long and successful career at IBM, where he worked from 1968 until his retirement in 2012. His final position at the company was as a field technical sales specialist.
But mostly, Christensen kept a low profile. When visiting online communities in his later years, Ward presented no ostentation, and there was no bragging about having made much of it possible. This amazed Scott, who said, “I was always fascinated that Ward kept a Twitter account, just messing around.”
Scott feels like humility, openness, and the spirit of sharing are key legacies that Christensen has left behind.
“It would be like a person who was in a high school band saying, ‘Eh, never really got into touring, never really had the urge to record albums or become a rock star,'” Scott said. “And then later people come and go, ‘Oh, you made the first [whatever] in your high school band,’ but that sense of being at that locus of history and the fact that his immediate urge was to share all the code everywhere—that’s to me what I think people should remember about this guy.”
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