The story about the beginnings of the Internet in Poland is a myth? “I haven’t sent any e-mail”

– I haven’t sent any e-mail. I just set up an internet connection. When you order the Internet today, a technician comes to your apartment and installs something there. I was just such a technician,” he explained

So how was the myth of the first email born? As Pietrak explained in an interview for “Rzeczpospolita”, August 17, 1991, as the date of sending the first e-mail, appeared for the first time on the 10th anniversary of Poland’s connection to the network, and the story was to be “coloured” by Maciej Kozłowski – then the head of NASK.

Because – as he explained it to me – the mere “connection” would mean nothing to anyone then, because everyone “connected” by dialing the modem to the number 0202122.

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For the first time, Poland connected to the Internet via a link with Copenhagen, but the first e-mail went to Hamburg, to the Nuclear Research Center with which we cooperated

– noted , an employee of the computer center of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw, who, together with Rafał Pietrak, “connected Poland to the Internet”. Anyway, it is August 17, 1991 that is widely recognized today as the key caesura that marks the beginning of “digital Poland”.

Before the internet, there was Fidonet

In the late 80’s, the Internet was a substitute BBSes (Bulletin Board System). We are simply talking about computers connected in nodes and equipped with special software (terminal), which allowed users to connect to them and use the resources stored there. The BBSes together formed the global Fidonet network.

‘Denunciations’ – the first virtual newspaper in Poland http://oldwww.fuw.edu.pl/denosy/

The main difference between Fidonet and the Internet known to us today was the fact that that the former did not have permanently turned on servers, and connections between independently operating BBSs took place in sessions. These sessions usually took place at night – mainly due to the then cheaper telephone tariff.

The first Fidonet nodes in Poland were established in 1987. A year later, the Polish Fidonet region was created, managed by Jan Stożek. In August 1989, the first issue was published “Denunciations”, the first Polish electronic newspaper distributed, among others, by via Fidonet nodes.

Former seat of NASK at ul. Wąwozowa 18 in Warsaw Adrian Grycuk – Own work/ CC BY-SA 3.0 pl

Web revolution

In March 1991 on University Warsaw was created NASK – Scientific and Academic Computer Network. These links compiled by NASK allowed the already mentioned Rafał Pietrak and a team of employees of the University of Warsaw to connect to the network of the Computer Center of the University of Copenhagen.

However, creating a university network and establishing contact with universities in other countries was only the first step on the way to connecting Poland with the global web. The next one took place in October 1991, when Polish computer networks were connected to the network in Europe.

The most important date, however, was December 1991. It was then that the US lifted the ban on the export of new computer and telecommunications technologies to the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. In effect On December 20, 1991, the Polish network was fully connected to the world’s WWW resources.

It is estimated that launching the Internet in Poland cost about 435 million old zlotys, i.e. (excluding inflation) 43.5 thousand. zloty. This is the grant scientists from the University of Warsaw received from the Committee for Scientific Research.

It is worth remembering that until 1994 the Internet in Poland was in principle academic network onlyand only a limited number of people had access to it. According to NASK, in January 1992, Poland could boast of only 2,000 Internet users. For comparison, in December 2022, 29.7 million people had access to the Internet in Poland.

The fact that the first Polish website was created by employees of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw is probably the best proof of how much the beginnings of the Internet in Poland were connected with the activities of universities and the academic network. The site was created on October 20, 1993 and was named Polish Home Page. Today it is no longer active, but a copy of it can be found at this address: http://oldwww.fuw.edu.pl/PHp.html.

Polish Home Page photo: Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw

Another issue was the speed of data transfer. Today, in the era of fiber optic internet and 5G networks, the speed of the link at the level of 1 Gb/s does not impress anyone. And what was it like over 32 years ago? Then the connection speed achieved approx. 10 kbps – let’s make it clear that we are talking about kilobits (kb), not kilobytes (kB). With such a transfer, downloading a file with a capacity of 100 MB would take us 22 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds, i.e. almost a day.

TPSA photo. Karol Piętek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

0 20 21 22 – this number was known to everyone in Poland

In 1995, the first Internet research was conducted in Poland. They showed that the number of Internet users in our country amounted to half a million people, the vast majority of whom were men. At that time, access to the Internet was still reserved for a fairly small group of people, taking into account that the population of Poland at that time was 38.6 million.

The situation changed a year later, thanks to telecommunications Polish, which was then the largest telephone operator in the country. In 1996, TP SA launched a service that made it possible to connect to the network using a telephone modem and the famous number 0 20 21 22, which probably everyone who grew up in the 90’s remembers.

Equally recognizable was the characteristic sound of “dialing up” to the Internet. It is also worth remembering that the model connected to the network blocked the telephone line, and the maximum connection speed was only 56 kb/s. Only a few years later, TP SA introduced the service to its offer SDI (Fast Internet Access), which provided a constant connection to the network without blocking the phone. However, you had to pay for SDI – a trifle – PLN 139 per month.