Ed wrote --

Back in the peak of dial up days Doc's had 4 dial up lines and averaged 100+

calls daily.

When the Internet came rolling in and dial up bbs's began dropping like

flies,

When I started out with a 300 baud, Commie 64 in the mid-80s the only thing available were local boards.
And as you wrote, as time passed, the Net came along, faster speeds, more powerful pc's, etc the local boards dropped from around 20+ to zero.
IMHO its just a progression, evolution if you will, of the entire system.
Let's take radio for an example.
Pre-1920 radio was for hams and the like. There were only a few "stations" and those didn't reach very far. The sets were complicated, expensive, and of little use to the average man or woman. They were really a wireless telegraph with voice a novelty.
(This could be very early days when only techies used it)
Within a few years early home sets appeared but these were still large, bulky
and technical. (Think DOS).
By the mid-20s radio was the rage, everyone was getting into the act. Sets were smaller, easier to use, even had horn speakers so more than one person at a time listen. (This would be the mid-80s with early Apples, Commies, Amiga, etc). But everything was still local since spanning distances was difficult.
This would be the heyday of local boards.
By the late '20s networks were started (NBC, CBS) using phone lines to connect local communities and be nationwide programming.
This would be the early stages of net, when it was still the domain of academia. (As late as 1993 the only access to the net here in Huntington, WV was via Marshall University. One had to apply for non-academic account and present reasons why one should have access and access granted on a case-by-cast
basis. Generally it was still limited to some sort of professional use, most often by non-profits.
I imagine most of us early users recall members of academia bemoaning the fact the great unwashed were invading their ivory towers who had no credentials
to even be there.
By the early '30s nearly everyone had a radio in the home with popular broadcasting. This would be around 1998 in computer use and the introduction of Win95 point and click with DOS fading away.
With the rise of networks local stations were no longer dependent on local only programming. Thus by 2000 local boards were still around but dropping on a daily basis since the net was open to all.
I could go on but you get the idea.
Joe


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