Jacob Hunt writes: "I just wanted to let you know there was a BBS for the Apple // series of computers called FrEdMail, short for "Free Educational Mail.""

"I was the assistant SysOp of the FrEdMail BBS in New Haven, CT long ago (1991?-1994?) before the network went down in the late 90's. The idea was multiple Apple // computers could form nodes and accept email bound for the Internet. Then, on a weekly or daily schedule (configurable) the BBS nodes would call up another node to exchange email. The nodes would cascade until the email reached a Unix computer connected to the Internet, and the email was sent out. Sometimes it took a week for an email to get to where it was going!"

"The idea was to give email capabilities to those who could not afford Internet access back in the day when it all just cost so much."