How were people using computers to communicite with each other before the Internet was made public?

There was (generally local) BBS (Bulletin Board Service) over dial-up using slow modems and there was e-mail. I don't know why you think there wasn't e-mail. From 1989-'93 I used and accessd a BBS service called Delphi in Boston.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

In the 80's, as a teenager I bought one of these.



There was a service that I think was called "bix" (although I can't google a reference to it right now) that offered news and primitive messaging. There were also several BBSs that I enjoyed. One being a place to find and share science fiction.

That being said, computers weren't really very good as communications tools back then.

the joy of connecting to BBS was also to connect to Usenet and the SIG groups (sci-fi, alt.photo, alt.music, alt.etc)

Other than BBSes, how else did people use computers to communicate with each other back then?

Using RF (radio frequency) to transmit data packet switching using the amateur radio bands.

I recall not being able to share programs-if I wanted to send someone a copy of a program I had to physically give it to them.

Perhaps you just weren't aware of the methods to do it, but methods were there. I know I did - share programs. Early on, it required using ftp or telnet protocol and some relatively higher (at the time) bandwidth. Transmitting at 300 baud was laughable, but 1200 baud was somewhat useful for small proggies that were very basic ANSI/ASCII text and some graphics.

We used to exchange programs on these things.



They had copy protection (i.e. tricks to try to keep people from making illegal copies). Cracking the copy protection was considered cool.

Tell me another story, Grandpa!

We used to exchange programs on this..

You used Compuserve in 1969? How old were you then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe

Back in the seventies, I was the youngest of the team that made the first transatlantic data base connection between the MIT and one of the major French research labs..

Dial up networks with email and discussion boards such as Genie and CIS with millions of members all over the US.

Hell I met my wife on the CIS network in 1985.

There was definitely email before 1995. My husband was a grad student in science and had an email account through his university by 1992. (I think he got it earlier than that, that's just when I'm certain he had one.) I studied abroad in early 1993 and convinced the school I was attending to allow me to use their email system -- which was not normally available to students -- to communicate with him, since I can't use a phone.

in the early 90's we used to stack up commodore 64's set them on fire and use smoke signals to communicate, you'd get some really nice black smoke from them suckers

As far as sharing programs I remember that a friend wife got very mad at him because we tie up both of our telephones lines sending a floppy disk worth of programs over a 300 baud modem for many hours.

We both was running ti99 computers systems at the time.

"baud" reminds me that I was using a teletypewriter/ telecommunications device for the deaf from about 1984. I've been using emoticons waaaayyy longer than most people. :-)

It was basically a primitive computer, that got fancier until it converged with regular computers and became pretty much extinct. (Pretty much nobody has ttys anymore, we all use smartphones or email or IP relay or VP instead.)

We still own our old TTY -- RP brought it with him when he moved in.

I remember having an email-type of account when taking computers in college. In 1980 or 1981 or so -- we also printed on the white and green paper.

Of course, there were 5.25 inch floppies that had tiny storage capacity. But I was referring to not using any physical media - using the computer itself to transmit the proggies.

Personally, I sent my first e-mail message in 1980...thought it was internal to my company, it still went to the UK division. In 1987, I bought my house from an internal employee on the in-house bulletin board system at DEC (Digital Equp't Corp). I had been using the company internal BBS back then since 1986.

In 1994, I was thrilled to trade in my modem and go to 14.4 k from 9600 baud. I thought I died and went to heaven. Liekwise further back in 1973,
I recall feeding punched tape into the leased-computer system to feed my research project results. That was maybe at 110 baud..not sure.

Hell, I'm waiting for someone to say how they JUST gave away their last carrier pigeons.