It was founded by IBM in 1979.

The international BITNET network began in the spring of 1981 when Ira  Fuchs and Greydon Freeman of the City University of New York and Yale University, respectively, decided that IBM’s Network job entry (NJE) communications protocol made computer-based communication practical between their Universities. BITNET the (Because It’s Time Network), began in the US as these two Universities began using a leased telephone circuit for communications between accounts on their  mainframe computers. BITNET’s development in the US was facilitated by an IBM grant. Email messages and files are transmitted in their entirety from one server to the next until reaching their destination. From this perserspective, BITNET

was more like Usenet. BITNET’s NJE network protocols, called RSCS were used for the used the huge IBM internal network known as VNET. BITNET links originally ran at 96000. The BITNET is a neural like net using single bit Weights and is essentially a wire or map between the inputs and outputs. This arrangement can store specific patterns only if one input bit is on a time, which for simple robotics applications is nearly the case. To test the ideas QBasic simulation was coded for MSDOS systems and a slightly modified version that converges much faster even with more out exclusions. This is the version which learns to produce good output the hard way.

In 1982 BITNET both reached across the US to California and was Joined by its European Counterpart EARN (European Academic and Research Network). In

1984 BITNET Executive committee, which consist of representatives from US BITNET nodes, was formed to develop BITNET policies and to plan for its future. BITNET was completely funded entirely by their membership from participating organizations, this made BITNET executive committee to form nonprofit corporation whose members were organizations participating in BITNET network. In 1989 BITNET merged with computer science Network(CSNET) form CREN (Corporation for Research and Educational Networking) but BITNET still having its own business. At its peak in 1991, this network connected some 1400 organizations in 49 countries for the exchange of information in research and education world wide. By 1993 BITNET participants began to decrease dramatically due to academic organization connected to internet. In 1994 CREN was focused in supporting their members in BITNET to

use internet and assisting their member

migration.