Actually ward doesnt claim to have invented the first BBS he used to claim he had invented the first microcomputer based BBS( And that he did I used to run his software in chicago about a week after its initial releas on a pmmi-103?? modem(300 baud)....I wondered what ever happened to ward... Modem7 was a GOOD protocol at the time ... aonly to be supplanted by first ymodem then zmodem from chuck forsberg... P.s. I used to play on the plato system also(its official charter at the time was limited to educators and Comp-sci typs (of which I was the later) Plato was GREAT for multiplayer games like "intergalactic conflict",(memory is poor here)... BTW why Plato had a messaging system of sorts it is GREATLY stretching it to call it a BBS... cheers n OLD fart