There are many things which began in 1996 that changed the course of history forevermore. Dolly the sheep was born… er… cloned. Garth Brooks refused to accept his American Music Award for Best Overall Artist because he so firmly believed in the hot new group Hootie and the Blowfish. AOL was the way to access the exciting new thing they called “the internet.” You know, important stuff.

But unlike Dolly, the Blowfish or AOL, some things that began in 1996 had some real staying power, and RCGroups.com is one of them.

In 1996, Jim Bourke wrote the "Electric Flight FAQ." He was assisted by posts on rec.models.rc, in particular by Doug Ingraham and Dennis Weatherly.

After writing the FAQ, Jim decided to create a mailing list of people like himself who were interested in electric airplanes.

Once the mailing list was running, it quickly became very popular. Jim set up a website where he could keep the FAQ and the mailing list instructions.

He didn't know what to name the website and felt it probably wasn't important, so he called it "The E Zone." At the time, it was very expensive and time-consuming to get a domain name of your own, so the site was hosted at http://world.std.com/~jbourke/ezone.html. By today's standards, that was a mouthful, but in 1996 it was standard for web pages to have long URLs like that.

For a quick lesson on how to use this new technology called the "internet," check out the video below:

The Internet As It Was In 1996 (59 min 45 sec)