Digital Chicken was among the earliest implementations of an
Internet email to fax gateway, active for several months during the mid-1990s.
The
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
-based gateway was created by Dr. Robert Riley through Internet service provider Planet Communications.
When email was sent to one of the designated addresses, the text was transmitted as fax to a designated party such as a Canadian government agency. For example, an email sent to ontatg@chicken.planet.org was converted to a fax transmission to the
Attorney General of Ontario.
The service initially lacked a formal domain name, therefore email routing of the form "utgpu!plan9!chyk!" was required until late 1993.
[ ol 6, No 4/ref>
Many of these "@chicken.planet.org" addresses were included in ]Seth Godin
Seth W. Godin is an American author and former dot com business executive.
Background
After leaving Spinnaker in 1986, he used $20,000 in savings to found Seth Godin Productions, primarily a book packaging business, out of a studio apartment i ...
's book,
''E-mail Addresses of the Rich and Famous'' (, Addison-Wesley, 1994), although these addresses were not maintained by the recipients.
Digital Chicken's hosting was changed from Planet Communications to UUNET in November 1993. The arrangements with Planet were terminated because of what Riley indicated were "complaints from certain government agencies". Digital Chicken was discontinued entirely in May 1994. By that time, The Phone Company (tpc.int) had established email-fax gateway coverage for Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
.
References
{{reflist
1993 establishments in Ontario
1994 disestablishments in Ontario
Internet in Canada