The Register: Usenet creator dead

"One of the two men behind Usenet, Jim Ellis, has died aged 45. He died at his home in Pennsylvania yesterday morning after losing his battle with non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Jim, together with fellow Duke University graduate Tom Truscott, came up with concept of Usenet - basically linking two computers together to share information - in 1979, predating the Web by 10 years. Steve Bellovin then wrote the first program, with Steve Daniel contributing to the first widely used version.

In 1980, it consisted of just two sites - one at Duke University and another in the University of North Carolina. However it became extremely popular very quickly as a means of sharing information across the globe and before the arrival of the Web was the largest decentralised store of information ever known."

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