Telecom Gold (sometimes also known as BT Gold) was an early commercial

electronic mail Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...

service launched by

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

in 1982. It was based on

Prime A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only way ...

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

s running Dialcom software under a customised version of

PRIMOS PRIMOS is a discontinued operating system developed during the 1970s by Prime Computer for its minicomputer systems. It rapidly gained popularity and by the mid-1980s was a serious contender as a mainline minicomputer operating system. With ...

. (ITT Dialcom was later acquired by BT in 1986.) The system offered various services, including e-mail to and from other Telecom Gold users and those of Dialcom services in other countries, and other e-mail systems such as

Sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace *Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automotive and motorcycle * Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 * Chevrolet Sprin ...

and integration with

telex The telex network is a station-to-station switched network of teleprinters similar to a telephone network, using telegraph-grade connecting circuits for two-way text-based messages. Telex was a major method of sending written messages electroni ...

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

, online databases and an experimental OCR system for a short while. Later,

X.400 X.400 is a suite of ITU-T Recommendations that defines the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). At one time, the designers of X.400 were expecting it to be the predominant form of email, but this role has been taken by the SMTP-based Internet e-m ...

functionality was added. Users would dial into the system using a conventional

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...

and

terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote ter ...

. Alternatively, users could dial a local number and connect via the PSS

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts a ...

network. The X.400 services also had a

Mail User Agent The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal syst ...

which ran on

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...

s and compatibles. The UK data centre was originally located in the basement of Beckett House 60-68 St Thomas St, Bermondsey, London, SE1 3QU but later moved to a custom built facility at Oxgate Centre, Oxgate Ln, London NW2 7JA which now houses LDEX1. The service eventually became obsolete with the growth of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

in 1996.

Although BT continued to market the service, it decided not to develop its elecom Goldsuccessor, Mailbox, into an Internet Service Provider when it became clear that people wanted to connect to the Internet during the early to mid 1990s. Instead, BT decided to launch a new Internet Service Provider, called BTnet, in 1994, and within two years, Mailbox had ceased to exist.

During the 1980s, BT Gold hosted one of the first online communities. Users communicated using a noticeboard () and via a simple chat facility which allowed real-time conversations to take place. The BT Gold community was worldwide, but the majority of users were in London and would meet regularly at "eyeballs" (coined from CB usage).

References

BT Group History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom Pre–World Wide Web online services Internet properties established in 1982 {{Telecomm-stub

See also

References