Alan W. Craft wrote in message . ..
On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 03:28:46 GMT, "Orion" ...reflected:

Virtual billboards?

My point being that with Orion Telescope
celebrating its 28th year in operation, how
then could you have possibly begun using
"Orion" as a Usenet handle prior to the
company's inception, Citizens Band
notwithstanding, and with even
that cutting it a bit close, not
to mention its utter irrelevance.
[...]

The "Net" has been around for a l-o-n-g time; I helped setup some of its
beginnings in 1971 and by 1972/73 I was able to use, for example, an IBM 360/195
at the Rutherford High Energy Labs (90 miles north of London, UK) from my home
in Silicon Valley (California).

The original "Net" news was called, surprisingly, "netnews" before the change
to Usenet. Often an entire's day batch was transmitted over phone lines via
UUCP because access to the ARPANET was not publicly available and the volume
was nothing like today's mess.

People were using "handles" then (late 1970s) for news, and were also using
handles on the various BBS systems and services such as GEnie, BIX, etc.

Circa early 1980s there was the "great renaming" of all the newsgroups, and
commercial backbones started appearing and many BBS systems and services began
connecting to what's now known as the Internet. People's usage of handles was
common then and now. I recall someone attempting to use the handle "orion" on
one of my BBS systems circa early 1980s but I doubt it's the same person or the
Orion (USA) company; I didn't permit handles on my systems (to eliminate their
anonymity) and that helped make these systems very popular because everyone who
subscribed respected the fact people are responsible for their own words.