(An interesting article from The Register’s Guy Kewney)

A Wizard whispers in your ear: “The password of Sheffield Library Packet Switching Service is ABC1234XYZ.”

That would be a conversation thirty years ago, on the Multi-User Dungeon, or MUD.

The Dungeon was actually a minicomputer at the University of Essex. I won’t tell you the name of the wizard, because he’s a big noise in the computer business these days, and not a hacker at all, dearie me no. But this isn’t the story of MUD and hackers (we can tell that tale another day). Rather, it’s the tale of how University of Essex came to run a minicomputer.

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