Jim Maxey is arguably one of the best known names during the BBS era (1978 to 1994). He operated the largest and most successful Bulletin Board System, Event Horizons BBS from 1983 to 1996.

Event Horizons was not the first BBS, but without doubt it was the best known and by far the most financially successful BBS, world-wide. According to the UK publication, The Economist, Event Horizons annual sales reached 3.2 million dollars in the early 1990's, which was long before the World Wide Web.

Jim Maxey has been featured on number of television programs, including "A Current Affair", BBC Television, "ABC Newswatch", "Science Digest", "The Tonight Show", "The Computer Chronicles", "Nova", and "The Science Channel", and "The Discovery Channel". Some of the information here was taken from those programs and are now in print for the first time.

Maxey began Event Horizons in 1983. He talked about being awarded custody of his toddler daughter and struggled to make ends meet. Maxey was a TV Broadcast Engineer in late 1978 but found he preferred working on camera as a reporter. Early on he was a disc jockey, then a television news reporter (Texas??) sometime in the mid 1980's. He also worked for the Army at Fort Hood, Texas where he helped create training videos about the Army M1 tank using enlisted personnel to identify the enemy. In one interview Maxey indicated his graphics career began from experiments with army tank models using graphics to replace or simulate moving targets.

On The Science Channel, Maxey talks about moving back to Oregon in 1987. Event Horizons had already existed for a few years. He settled down with his daughter (where he was apparently the local Girl Scout Leader in Lake Oswego, Oregon), a lowly book editor, an animal rights activist, and began to develop ways to make Event Horizons more profitable.

Jim Maxey's accomplishments include:

• Founded one of the first commercial Online business. In 1983 he created Event Horizons Inc and operated Event Horizons BBS as CEO and president.
• World's most profitable BBS (Bulletin Board System).
• In 1989 was the first BBS to accept credit cards for online access with a merchant account.
• First to create a succession of moving images or "movies" available to download on the BBS.
• Originator and creator of MaxiPic images.
• With seven other developers, help establish the GIF format on Compuserve Information Service. In an interview with Andrew Sedgemeir (sp), Maxey indicated he was not the brains behind the GIF development, only one of several invited by Compuserve to develop the format.
• Created the first color images with the new EGA format, which preceded the VGA format.
• In 1987 coined the term "SuperVGA" with the first high resolution images profiled on After Hours in the best selling magazine at the time, PC Magazine.
• Created perhaps the first Dating Service in 1983.
• Authored the first graphics oriented online game, "Escape From Languor".
• Authored the award winning "Voyager III", an educational adventure into space which actually taught astronomy. The adventure was profiled on the cover of Boardwatch magazine.

BACKGROUND:

Event Horizons BBS began in 1983 but it was years before success allowed Jim Maxey to consider serious advertising, mostly it seems with PC-Magazine. Apparently Event Horizons BBS had no competition for more than two years. Maxey's company used interesting ad concepts which seemed imaginative for the time and probably wouldn't work today. The headline ad claimed, "WORLDS MOST EXPENSIVE BBS. LET US SHOW YOU WHY". However, others have claimed this may not have worked as well as Maxey had thought.

Jim Maxey was one of the first BBS system operators (sysops) to run the commercial BBS package, The Bread Board System (TBBS) created by Phil Becker. For the 13 year history of Event Horizons Jim Maxey continued to use TBBS software to run his BBS.

In 1992 Playboy Enterprises sued Event Horizons for copyright infringement. Apparently Event Horizons BBS was offering lingerie images of nude women first published and owned by Playboy. The exact details of the lawsuit has not been made public but a segment on ABC NEWSWATCH in 1993 indicated Maxey settled out of court with Playboy, and wrote a check for a half million dollars to Playboy as compensation. An article in Boardwatch magazine then urged Playboy to use Maxey's BBS design to create Playboy's own online service.

Rumor indicates Jim Maxey retired from the BBS world in or around 1996 to write or lecture on his history and creating business packages for the corporate world. Other reports have him retiring in absurity and pennyless. At least, we cannot locate him.

The following are a few images graciously granted to us by permission from The Archives BBS where apparently Maxey signed an agreement to display some of the images from the early days. We publish these images now with permission.