Giganews – Preserving the History of Usenet Newsgroups

Giganews have started to put together a Usenet History Project that is well worth a look if you want to know a little more about the history of the Internet.

Whilst Web Forums and the like have overshadowed Usenet (EDIT:- Certainly, this is the case since I first wrote this article back in 2007!) there is still a huge archive of Usenet Newsgroups containing well over 75,000 Usenet newsgroups covering everything from Science to Pro-Wrestling and everything in between!

My Memories of Usenet

I still fondly remember the days of using Demon Internet to dial-up to the ‘net using KA9Q and then using newsreaders under DOS to access Usenet – which before that little thing called the World Wide Web came along – was us ‘net geeks main source of information!

For instance. The year is 1994. You’re a spotty 18-year-old ‘net geek. If you want to know what the difference between an IBM Blue Lightning 486DX-3 75mhz and an Intel 486DX2-66 CPU? Usenet knew. 😉

How to use Usenet Newsgroups

If you’ve never used Usenet newsgroups before then chances are your ISP provides you with them EDIT:- then you may want to check out the Usenet newsgroup archives.

Google Groups superseded (or swallowed up, whichever way you look at it) Usenet newsgroups and you can still access Google Groups online.

You can also search the Usenet archive via Giganews.