Prestel
In 1983, the Prestel messaging service known as “Prestel Mailbox” was launched, initially hosted on the computer known as "Enterprise", and later available from all IRC computers by means of a centralised messaging computer known as "Pandora". This facility extended the original day one concept of “Response Frames” whereby an end user could send a message back to the IP who owned the page via special pages, for example to order goods or services. The user’s name, address, telephone number, and date could be added automatically to the message when the IP set up the response frame by means of codes which triggered extraction of key data from the users account held on the IRC computer. Initially response frames were ingathered by an IP from each IRC individually, but later the facility to collect messages from all IRCs at the UDC from where they could be ingathered centrally was implemented, and with the introduction of Mailbox, they could be retrieved from any IRC.
History of the Internet
Following discussions with J. C. R. Licklider, Donald Davies became interested in data communications for computer networks. At the National Physical Laboratory (United Kingdom) in 1965, Davies designed and proposed a national data network based on packet switching. The following year, he described the use of an "Interface computer" to act as a router. The proposal was not taken up nationally but by 1967, a pilot experiment had demonstrated the feasibility of packet switched networks.