 |
Kena Shriners
(Hiram's Oasis)
|
 |
|
|
Kena Shriners
(Hiram's Oasis)
|
|
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 Freemasons. 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 (WWW) 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 11-20-2010