AP- Myron Schell. the first person ever to post a "first post" message to an electronic bulletin board, died today at his home in Walnut Creek, California, following a long battle with cancer. Schell was singled out for his unique distinction after an internet-wide search for the inventor of the "first post!" phenomenon narrowed the likely culprit down to a group of developers who frequented the mod.clanguage Usenet group in the mid 1980s. After some discussion, the group agreed that Schell had been the first "first post"-er. In an interview with the magazine 2600, Schell was good-humored about the humble beginnings of what eventually became an international obsession:

Schell: At the time the mod.clanguage board had, in addition to the usual postings, a discussion topic set by one of the moderators. These came up once or twice a week. One day, I happened to be the first to reply to one of the discussion threads, and I was feeling silly, so I posted a message reading "first post!", that was the whole message.

2600:What was the reaction?

Schell: People thought I forgot to attach the body of the message! (laughter) They thought I'd put "first post" there for logging purposes. Once everybody got the joke, it really turned into a heated competition. But after a while, as you know, the moderators cracked down on the practice.

2600: Were they that upset about all the first posts?

Schell: Actually, there's a funny story about that. What happened was someone went onto an old thread and posted a message reading "last post"! (laughter) He showed it to a couple of people for laughs, and someone posted another "last post" message to the thread the next day. As you can guess, this escalated, and there ended up being dozens of "last post" messages on that one thread! (laughter)

2600:That's when the moderator intervened?

Schell: Yes. It was a guy named Jimmy Chan. Remember storage was dear back then: his exact words were something like: "I'm not archiving this crap!" (laughter)

Myron Schell is survived by his wife, two daughters, and grandson. Although Schell was a humble man who avoided the limelight, his impact on modern culture can hardly be overestimated.