CB Simulator
CB Simulator was the first popular online chat service. Built for CompuServe by Alexander “Sandy” Trevor, it launched on February 21, 1980. It used the familiar CB radio idea with 40 channels and commands like tune, squelch, and monitor, making a new concept easy to grasp. It quickly became CompuServe’s biggest product, and later more channels and bands were added.
People used CB Simulator to socialize and meet others online. The service hosted the first online wedding, and fans organized real‑world meetups. Notable stories include Chris Dunn meeting his wife Pamela there, later featured on TV. Over time, the system gained features for multiplayer games, pictures, multimedia, and large conferences. A famous moment was Mick Jagger hosting the first online multimedia conference from London in 1995. Another early online wedding occurred in 1991 between MilesTeg and Cinderella, with a Las Vegas ceremony and a live online reception.
CB Simulator stayed in service until CompuServe Classic shut down in 2009. The software also inspired early BBS chat software. In October 1983, CBSIM CB Simulator, created by Jerry Thomas Hunter, became the first publicly accessible CB Simulator for privately run bulletin board systems. It was released as freeware for RBBS-PC and let users on one BBS chat with users on other BBSs. It started with up to 32 concurrent nodes, and users could create and catalog channels. Its source code was released publicly from the start and influenced later multi‑node chat systems.
In the mid-1980s, a version of CB was written for the DEC RSTS/E operating system, using a rare shared memory approach to track users. It could connect CB across DECnet and even run programs while chatting via a built‑in pseudo‑tty. This version was shared with the DECUS RSTS SIG community.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 00:10 (CET).