Ward Christensen (of BBS and XMODEM fame) has died

An amazing guy, and not much of an attention seeker. That he stayed at IBM all his productive work life (1968-2012) says something, especially as "His last position with IBM was field technical sales specialist."

I had a meeting with him (as a customer) in probably 2007. Super unassuming and humble guy. I had no idea who he was during the meeting until after, when I saw him get in his car with an XMODEM license plate and googled him and found the connection. RIP, Ward.

I knew him as one of the co-founders (with Randy Seuss and Ted Nelson) of Evanston's Itty Bitty Machine Company, a storefront that sold (among other things) Digital Group 8085/Z80/6502 machines. My high school friend, Alex Ellingsen, worked there (while in high school).

Recently, I've been playing with MMBasic (for E32s and RPi2040s) and a question about XMODEM and YMODEM came up on their online forum. Ward responded immediately to my inquiry, and gave me the exact information I needed.

Very nice guy.

I met him back around 1980... and yet this is the first I'm learning of the Itty Bitty Machine Company... I'm sorry I didn't hear about this from him along the way.