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@cazabon as a big email fan, I disagree. IRC was the first "chat" (as in "instant message"), to this day, delivery times on emails could be up to 1 week. So they really are more of a letter equivalent, less a direct conversation.

@mpldr

IRC, or Internet Relay Chat to give it its full name, dates from 1988.

There were other instant chat protocols in use before IRC. The Unix `talk` program and its relatives, for example were around by the late 1970s at least, and possibly earlier. I used `talk` a lot to chat with Europeans (I'm in Canada) long ago.

But email is the granddaddy of them all. Email was in use long before that - about 20 years before IRC, in fact. It predates the term "internet", having originated on the ARPANET.

@cazabon thanks, never heard of the pre-IRC chat protocols. Guess I found todays rabbit hole ^^