UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy)
acronymISP & telecomops culture
The 1970s Bell Labs suite that let one Unix machine dial another over a modem to exchange files, mail and commands - store-and-forward networking for people with no network, only telephones.
Addresses were bang paths that spelled out the physical route a message would take, hop by hop: mymachine!theirmachine!you. Mail took days and everyone knew which links were reliable. UUCP carried Usenet, connected the pre-internet Unix world into the UUCPNET, and taught the operational reflexes - queue, retry, forward, tolerate the link being down - that resurface every time a system has to work over an unreliable path.
Also known as: unix to unix copy, bang path, uucpnet