Timeline of File Sharing - 1970s

1970s

• 1971 – The 8-inch floppy disk, the first removable magnetic medium and the first removable media, is developed by an IBM team led by David Noble. It allows for manual file transfer. Removable media would become a target of media industry efforts against the sharing of intellectual property. Predecessor of CD-ROMs and flash media.
• 1977 – Xmodem a point-to-point binary transfer protocol by Ward Christensen.
• February 1978 – Ward Christensen's CBBS becomes the first Bulletin board system. BBS access is limited to phone lines until early 1990s.
• 1979 – Usenet conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. Its primary purpose is to facilitate focused discussion threads within topical categories (Usenet newsgroups), but it also allows the transfer of files. As of 2012 alt.binaries.* newsgroups continue to serve files.