Recycling ANSI Art: Tracing the Origins of BBS Logon Screens
BBS-era "door" games are preserved by the site Break Into Chat, along with their history. Now the site's actually traced the origins of several ANSI art screens in the 1980s and "how different people later transformed the original images," starting from one of the most popular bulletin board systems in St. Louis, Missouri. Slashdot reader Kirkman14 writes: "Fire Escape" was curator of the…
In the 1980s, one of the most popular bulletin board systems (BBS) in St. Louis, Missouri, was known as Fire Escape. The BBS curator, whose real name remains unknown, found and repurposed older ANSI art to enliven the BBS. Fire Escape had 18 different logon screens in its rotation, many featuring flames, mushroom clouds, or red and yellow colors.
Several artists, such as Michael C. Ling, Lora Ruffner (Ebony Eyes), and Violet Stymacks, created the ANSI art. Stymacks was particularly generous, sending her screens to various BBS sysops. By late 1990, over 500 BBS systems were using her screens, with the number tripling three years later. Despite her prolific output, Stymacks may have reused or remixed her own work over time.
The ethical dilemma of permission and copyrighting these screens has been a long-standing issue within the BBS, ASCII, and ANSI art communities.
Written by urgent.news from Slashdot's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
