From the basement of is home in Vienna Virginia, Preston had established an electronic Bulletin Board Service (BBS) called the Hiram’s Oasis. This BBS was to the best of our knowledge the first electronic bulletin board for Free Masons. Its purpose was the transmission and storage of messages and of articles for publication and from publication. Hiram’s Oasis was continuously running for over 10 years from November, 1987 through September 1997 at which time the information from the Hiram’s Oasis BBS was copied to the internet and made available on the Hiram’s Oasis website http://www.Kena.org/Hirams by the current club president Noble William J. Baumbach II.

The BBS was at first either a XT or 286 computer with one modem and phone line. You had to direct dial-in using your computer modem and only one user at a time could connect. Since this could require a long distant phone call for users most were local to Vienna Virginia, but being such a great source of Masonic information there were several regular users from other states and a few from other parts of the World.

The internet and its World Wide Web made the BBS obsolete and within a year or two of moving the information to the internet the BBS was taken off-line by Preston.

With a lot of time-consuming hard-work Preston was able to collect and organize over 4,000 Masonic related files during this 10 year period. Since moving those to the internet there has been over 20,000 page views and many thousands of files have been downloaded by internet users from around the World. Preston continued to provide Masonic information and files for the Hiram’s Oasis website up until his death on May 10, 2000. The Principal purpose of the Hiram’s Oasis website is to provide the exchange of Masonic information and for Masonic education.

REVISED 10-02-2001

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