[dsimms]

great article! It's not mentioned there, but I think the "conventional phone lines" meant fax, which was a pretty common gateway from the internet at the time. One of the McCools (can't remember if it was Rob or Mike) had a new-fangled CGI script that enabled a HTML form to order Jimmy Johns sandwich and it used UIUCs email-to-fax gateway to fax the local shop. Good times.