Randy Suess was born January 27, 1945, and died December 10, 2019.  He’s the second computing legend we’ve lost in a week.

During the “great blizzard of ’78”, Suess and Ward Christiansen conceived of and designed the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) and modem dialing protocols. CBBS went online on February 16, 1978.

CBBS allowed users to dial in via computer modem, exchange messages, read news, share files, send email. It was the precursor to online news, blogging, social media, etc. We take these things for granted today and few BBSs are active anymore, but it didn’t exist before Suess and Christiansen.