Modems of old sent data down ordinary telephone lines as audible tones. So it was just an ordinary phone call required to “connect” two computers.
A BBS would be someone/thing with one or more ordinary telephone lines and a public number (no different to a modern call-center or switchboard in the largest instances, down to a teenager who used his house phone number between the hours of 6pm-8pm or whatever).
They would connect a modem to the phone line, and it would answer calls.
Other people around the world could then phone the advertised phone number, using the settings provided, and connect their modem to the BBS modem.
The BBS would then, basically, send the equivalent of teletext / websites / emails / files, etc. down the data line to the user’s modem and the user’s modem would transmit back files from the user (“uploads”), keyboard strokes (e.g. to select menus or search for downloads or play games or whatever), or whatever else.
You could do it between two schoolfriends with modems / phone lines to chat or play games. Between businesses to send documents back and forth. As a business to let your customers connect to you and order things. As an “ISP”, in effect, by letting hundreds of people dial into the same phone line and all connect together, much like you can all phone a company today on the same number.
Basically anything that involves sending and receiving data to each other. You just did it not by voice, but by two computers sending that data electronically in an ordinary phone call between them as a series of beeps and bips and tones etc.
A literal BBS (bulletin board system) was such a system where you could “press 1 to leave a message for a user” and then that user could dial up to the same BBS later to “press 2 to check if someone has left you a message”, for instance. Most BBS were actually a multitude of features – from games and share dealing to “websites”, searching, chat, messaging, file upload/download, etc. etc.
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