First Class - Early History

Early History

FirstClass was originally a product of SoftArc, formed by three former members of Bell Northern Research, Nortel's research arm located in downtown Toronto. The team, consisting of two brothers and a friend, had been the primary developers of the successful Meridian Mail system, and styled themselves as the Toronto Ideas Group. After a run-in with management, the three left and formed SoftArc as a consulting firm.

FirstClass was created in response to a request by a family friend who worked at the Scarborough Board of Education (now part of the Toronto District School Board). He asked them to find a reasonable Macintosh-based e-mail system that offered both LAN and modem support, a real GUI, and supported both private e-mail as well as public discussion areas (forums). He wanted a system that "even teachers could use". BBSes offered modem support and public forums, but typically had no LAN support and were character-based. Various LAN e-mail systems existed, those on the Mac with reasonable GUI's, but they tended to have poor modem support and few offered forums.

The team found only one product, AppleLink, which came close to filling the requirements. However, it was run on a mainframe for Apple Computer and couldn't be purchased, so the team offered to build a system under contract for $85,000. Scarborough Board really liked the Hypercard prototype, but couldn't afford the price, so they offered to buy a system for $9000 and then help sell it to other boards. The proposal was accepted, and work on EduNet started some time in 1989, debuting in 1990 at the ECOO conference.