Anyone want to guess when the first on-line romance occurred? I have a citation for a pretty early one.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), November 26, 1999

Answers

Mine? Or someone else's?

-- (Ladylogic@aol.com), November 26, 1999.

Alexander Graham Bell, when he said "Watson, come here I need you ... just kidding ... < vbg >

-- John (jh@NotReal.ca), November 26, 1999.

To clarify, I mean the earliest one that we have records for.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), November 26, 1999.

We understood Steve. We are just playing around with an OT question.

-- Laura (Ladylogic46@aol.com), November 26, 1999.

I met my online romance on May 1994. He was from Chicago and I was from New York and we fell in love after 6 months of E-mails back and forth (no live chats yet). This was on America OnlineLine and then I switched to online chats on Delphi so I could talk realtime. We got together in April 1995 for two glorious weeks in VA. Now we've been together for over 4 years straight since June 1995 in VA. He's a lovely man and great hubby so do I hold he record? : ) He's even a GI!

-- Debi (LongTimeLurker@shy.com), November 26, 1999.

Wonderful, Debi! You should post more :-)

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 26, 1999.

I met a certain prominent member of this forum online in May '94 (in a Cserve chat room). We moved in together in July '94 and are still going strong.

:)

-- Can't say (love@online.com), November 26, 1999.

June 1993. I was the system operator (sysop) for a local bulletin board system (bbs). A sysop friend of another bbs "fixed me up" with a friend of hers. (Thx Steph!)

We communicated via email for about a month, graduated to the phone for about two weeks, and met for the first time in person for dinner in August 1993. Ours eyes met, we smiled, we hugged.

We married in September of 1994 and have an incredible relationship and wonderful marriage.

This one's for you Babe. My friend, my partner, and the love of my life, my wonderful wife Laura. Your loving husband, Ken

-- Ken Mitcham (ken_mitcham@yahoo.com), November 26, 1999.

Met my hubby over a BBS in 1993. We were enemys in a play by email take over the universe game. (VGA Planets) Over six months of attacking each other visciously, and writing threating letters to each other through the game, we came to like each other. :-) I think that's sorta neat. Been married Five Years and plan to be happily ever after y2k.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), November 26, 1999.

I'm no way the winner -- met on 1/6/99, but it still feels like I'm the winner: exchanged 42 LONG emails in the 1st 72 hrs, went down to AL (fr TN) on 1/ll/99, & that clinched it. Moved down, married, and doing great. THANK YOU, Y2K!! (Never would have split my previous marriage of 25 yrs had it not been for the dynamics of Y2K's urgency/pressure.)

Bill

-- William J. Schenker, MD (wjs@linkfast.net), November 26, 1999.

I know the answer to this but I happen to know someone close to this issue so I won't give it away.

I would like to say that I too met someone very wonderful online. It happened that a certain author needed a test reader, or novice of sort to help clarify his writing of a book-in-progress. I volunteered for the job. It turned out I was the only novice that stuck with him through it all. After 6 months of blood, sweat, and tears we emerged with a book, and time to realize that we were falling in love. That was in 1995, we married in 1997, and couldn't be happier today, even with Y2K looming.

Susan Heller

-- Susan (suheller@koyote.com), November 26, 1999.

WHY are we wasting space on such drivel OT topics? This is more of a question for the Jenny Jones chat room types.

-- Bill (billclo@msgbox.com), November 27, 1999.

Okay, so far our earliest entry is from 1993. Although I like these stories, you aren't even close to the first recorded on-line romance, though. Come on, let's have some guesses as to when that was!

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), November 27, 1999.

I was "on line" in 1980, but didn't have an on-line romance, unless you count the Vice President of United Airlines who told me he loved me becouse I could supply him with the status of his 757 aircraft parts almost instantainously.

This is back in the days when you picked up the phone, punched in the number, waited to hear the computer on the other end squeel then hung the reciever on a "modem cradle".

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), November 27, 1999.

Okay, I'll give you all a hint: it was before 1970.

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), November 28, 1999.

Though not actually sent "online", the following may seem distantly related to the topic of this thread. It is over 100 years old.

VALENTINE BY A TELEGRAPH CLERK TO A TELEGRAPH CLERK.
by James Clerk Maxwell

"THE tendrils of my soul are twined
With thine, though many a mile apart,
And shine in close-coiled circuits wind
Around the needle of my heart.
"Constant as Daniell, strong as Grove,
Ebullient through its depths like Smee,
My heart pours forth its tide of love,
And all its circuits close in thee.
"O tell me, when along the line
From my full heart the message flows,
What currents are induced in thine?
One click from thee will end my woes."
Through many an Ohm the Weber flew,
And clicked this answer back to me,
"I am thy Farad, staunch and true,
Charged to a Volt with love for thee."

Notes:

1. Daniell, Grove and Smee were types of batteries used by telegraphers.
2. Ohm, Weber, Farad and Volt are names of various electrical attributes each named in honor of early researchers, Ohm, Weber, Faraday, and Volta.
3. Maxwell was a prodigious 19th century scientist with a sense of humor.

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), November 30, 1999.

Okay, that last one was close enough. Here's what I was using as a reference:

It works today -- it worked then! At the turn of the century, Lord Kelvin (William Thompson, 1824-1907), inventor of the siphon recorder and the galvanometer, and scientific writer of repute, wooed and won his second XYL [Ham speak for "wife"] via the romantic language of the dits and dahs.

QST magazine, November 1946, p. 122

-- Steve Heller (stheller@koyote.com), November 30, 1999.

Steve,

I had no idea that Kelvin was the answer you had in mind.

I was considering a fourth note, but decided against it. It would have been something like: It does not seem that Maxwell did much work on telegraphy himself; but his friend William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, did a great deal. :-)

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), November 30, 1999.