Editing Online chat (section)

== History ==
The first online chat system was called [[Talkomatic]], created by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley in 1973 on the [[PLATO System]] at the [[University of Illinois]]. It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed. Talkomatic was popular among PLATO users into the mid-1980s. In 2014, Brown and Woolley released a web-based version of Talkomatic.<ref>{{Cite web|title=PLATO {{!}} computer-based education system |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/PLATO-education-system|access-date=2021-11-17|website=Britannica |language=en|archive-date=17 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117105441/https://www.britannica.com/topic/PLATO-education-system|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first online system to use the actual command "chat" was created for The Source in 1979 by Tom Walker and Fritz Thane of Dialcom, Inc.<ref>{{Cite web|title=DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A MULTILINGUAL CHAT APPLICATION|url=https://nairaproject.com/projects/3835.html|access-date=2021-11-17|website=nairaproject.com|archive-date=17 November 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117105448/https://nairaproject.com/projects/3835.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Other chat platforms flourished during the 1980s. Among the earliest with a [[GUI]] was BroadCast, a [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]] extension that became especially popular on [[university]] campuses in America and Germany.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://openworks.wooster.edu/voice1991-2000/209|title="Sell a Couch or Make a New Friend: Broadcast Provides Potential Mind Games and Hookups." The Wooster Voice, November 19, 1998, p.8|author=Molly McKinney|journal=The Voice: 1991–2000|date=19 November 1998|access-date=2 July 2019|archive-date=2 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190702193056/https://openworks.wooster.edu/voice1991-2000/209/|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first transatlantic Internet chat took place between [[Oulu, Finland]] and [[Corvallis, Oregon]] in February 1989.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://securitydigest.org/tcp-ip/archive/1989/02|title=The 'Security Digest' Archives (TM) : TCP-IP Distribution List for February 1989|website=securitydigest.org|access-date=6 May 2018|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171208231416/http://securitydigest.org/tcp-ip/archive/1989/02|archive-date=8 December 2017|df=dmy-all}}</ref>

The first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public was the CompuServe [[CB Simulator]] in 1980,<ref name="ColumbusDispatch-1996.05.11" /><ref name="ColumbusDispatch-2000.11.12" /> created by [[CompuServe]] executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor in [[Columbus, Ohio]]. Ancestors include network chat software such as UNIX [[Talk (software)|"talk"]] used in the 1970s.{{fact|date=August 2020}}

Chat is implemented in multiple [[videoconferencing|video-conferencing]] tools. A study of chat use during work-related videoconferencing found that chat during meetings allows participants to communicate without interrupting the meeting, plan action around common resources, and enables greater inclusion.<ref>{{Citation|last1=Sarkar|first1=Advait|title=The promise and peril of parallel chat in video meetings for work|date=2021-05-08|url=https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451793|work=Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems|pages=1–8|place=New York, NY, USA|publisher=Association for Computing Machinery|doi=10.1145/3411763.3451793|isbn=978-1-4503-8095-9|access-date=2021-11-01|last2=Rintel|first2=Sean|last3=Borowiec|first3=Damian|last4=Bergmann|first4=Rachel|last5=Gillett|first5=Sharon|last6=Bragg|first6=Danielle|last7=Baym|first7=Nancy|last8=Sellen|first8=Abigail|s2cid=233987188 }}</ref> The study also found that chat can cause distractions and information asymmetries between participants.