Internet Relay Chat is a Unix-based Internet chat system that was created in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen of Finland. There was an earlier Unix-based program on the Internet called Talk--this program would connect two users at one time who were both logged in to their Unix accounts, possibly on different systems. A "talk window" appeared on a regular Unix shell, with a horizontal line that partitioned the window into two halves. Each user would see whatever he typed in one half, and whatever the other person typed in the other half. Although Talk was a successful program and remains installed on many systems, its utility was limited--it did not allow for the transfer of files during talk sessions, and more importantly, it did not afford a way to connect more than two users together at one time.

The IRC program that Oikarinen created...