On Friday, Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system ( BBS ), died at age 78 in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Christensen, along with Randy Suess , created the first BBS in Chicago in 1978, leading to an important cultural era of digital community-building that presaged much of our online world today.

Friends and associates remember Christensen as humble and unassuming, a quiet innovator who never sought the spotlight for his groundbreaking work. Despite creating one of the foundational technologies of the digital age, Christensen maintained a low profile throughout his life, content with his long-standing career at IBM and showing no bitterness or sense of missed opportunity as the Internet age dawned.

"Ward was the quietest, pleasantest, gentlest dude," said BBS: The Documentary creator Jason Scott in a conversation with Ars Technica. Scott documented Christensen's work extensively in a 2002 interview for that project. "He was exactly like he looks in his pictures," he said, "like a groundskeeper who quietly tends the yard."

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