[CQ-Contest] Where did "Reflector" come from?

[Michael Adams]

I remember "reflector" from my BBS days in the early/mid 1980's.

I also remember that when I got to the internet in 1990, there was a technical distinction between "reflector" and ("mailing list"/"LISTSERV").   Reflectors were "dumb" ways to direct email to a manually maintained list of addressees; anything sent to the reflector list, including error messages, would go to everyone on the list.

Mailing lists were smarter things, where a program would be used to maintain the distribution list; eventually people could add or remove themselves by sending a message to administrative addresses associated with specific lists; and the program would attempt to filter out error messages (or offer an administrator the power to moderate the list) to avoid unwanted traffic (a concern at 300/1200/2400 bps dial-up speeds).  LISTSERV was probably the first (or at least the first to be widely used) mailing list software, followed later by Majordomo and Mailman.

-- 
Michael Adams | mda at n1en.org

-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest <cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com> On Behalf Of Dave Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, 11 June, 2019 08:40
To: cq-contest at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Where did "Reflector" come from?


Gang,

The word reflector was used on the darpa net that proceeded the internet WWW. I used that to keep up with friends at Wang and Netron. my previous employers.  Some say it is derived from old BBS boards.
73 Dave K4JRB 

_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest