Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!pro-exchange.cts.COM!bsherman
From: bsherman@pro-exchange.cts.COM (Bob Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: HAPPY BIRTHDAY !
Message-ID: <8806281217.AA18471@crash.cts.com>
Date: 28 Jun 88 11:15:09 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: pnet01!pro-sol!pro-exchange!bsherman@nosc.mil
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 48

It all began about eight years ago, when a fellow named Bob purchased a modem
and discovered there was not much around south Florida to use it for. The
idea of setting up a BBS came to mind, but being a computer nut himself, he
did not want to give up the use of his own computer to run the BBS on. 
 
Bob mentioned his idea to Tom, a young man trying to make a living by selling
and fixing Apple computers in his south Dade apartment. Tom and his new bride
May liked the idea, but did not have much time to devote to the programming
of such a venture. A deal was struck, Tom always had extra computers hanging
around, and Bob could program and operate the BBS by phone, remotely from his
north Dade home..
 
In June of 1981 the idea was put together, along with several weeks of
testing and hoping it would work as it was supposed to. On July 4, 1981 the
system went public with the name of Miami's Big Apple, and the fellows spread
the word to some of their friends, giving out the phone number, and waiting
for the calls. Their friends told other people and it was happening, Miami's
Big Apple was born. As time went on, Bob procured a second Apple computer and
offered to move the set-up to his north Dade home, thus eliminating the
midnight panic calls to Tom such as "the system has crashed, please get up
and re-boot it".
 
Since then, the system has received about 84,000 calls from all over the
world, from the famous, and the not so famous, and has grown much larger in
size and scope. 
 
So as we celebrate our seventh anniversary and begin our eighth year of
service to the computer community, I would like to thank Tom Romkey and his
wife May, who walked the floor many a night while the new baby resided at
their apartment (Tom no longer sells computers from his home, he now owns
Personal Computer Store on South Dixie Highway), and my wife Carol, who has
many a time seen her husband glued to the Big Apple keyboard in an attempt to
keep the system online 365 days a year, when she had other thoughts in mind,
and to my son Roby, who has spent hours on end helping with the programming
on the system, as well as keeping it running during the times I have been
racking up hundreds of thousands of miles traveling about the hemisphere on
business.
 
I would also like to thank the folks that call the system, for making us
the oldest, most often called system in the entire southeastern United
States, and perhaps the oldest in the country.
 
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MIAMI'S BIG APPLE  -  305-948-8000
 
 

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